The goal of this study is to address policy directions for safe society from environmental disasters. The study site is limited to the Gyeonggi-do and the time frame for the data analysis is from the year 2004 to the year 2013. The employed research method is a content analysis. The data for the analysis come from the previous researches which have the key words associated with environmental pollutions, environmental disasters, and environmental accidents.
Results are as follows; First, environmental disasters can be defined the social-disaster with unintentionally caused environmental pollutions or accidents. To be called environmental disasters, the events must be characterized as environmental pollutions or accidents through the their entire processes. Second, the process of environmental disasters can be classified into five different types. Third, environmental disasters are discussed from either a broad perspective or a limited perspective depending on their contexts. Fourth, nuclear, chemical, and oil spill related disasters have the enormous impacts on the society once it happens. In that case, pre-management efforts are much more important than post-management efforts. Fifth, storm, wild-fire, contagion related disasters have relatively less critical impacts on the society compared to the nuclear related disaster. Thus, in this case, post-event efforts are equally important to post-event efforts. Sixth, environmental disasters management should be done by investigating fishbone diagram analyses presented in this paper.
The implications from the results are as follows: For the safe society from environmental disasters, the national government needs (1) to encourage further researches in a process oriented disaster management; (2) to prepare unknown disasters which our society haven’t experienced so far; (3) to enforce duty change programs between environment and development related agents; (4) to develop a disaster management system in the consideration of the public emotions.
Gyeonggi-do needs (1) to develop management programs associated with secondary environmental damages; (2) to find new types of environmental disaster we haven’t experienced before and prepare them; (3) to prepare hazardous material management systems not limited to industrial sectors but daily life related realm; (4) to have more government staffs in the filed of environment - safety.