島嶼特殊災害類型與臺灣或大陸型地區之主要災害不同，經常未受到應有的重視或研究，即使生活在島上之居民也未必了解島嶼型災害，地方政府又常將臺灣觀點或法令直接移植相關規定至小型島嶼，形成不當的災害類別認定或規模設定，不僅島嶼有限之防救災資源產生錯置，嚴重者可能無法達成救災目的，在孤立無援的小型島嶼上，此問題更加突顯其不合理。本研究在釐清金門災害型式與規模，針對災害進行分類與規模設定，並依金門各類災害之傷亡人數、災損與發生頻率，加權估算災害之嚴重性序位，以確認金門島嶼型災害類別。結果顯示金門島嶼災害序位為風災、海難、重大火災、濃霧、地雷與彈藥爆炸、空難、電廠事故、旱災、地震、海洋污染。另針對災害對島嶼危害規模設定之研究，主要以臺灣之規模為對比依據，並以嘉義縣代表臺灣非都會區，將影響兩地相同居民數量之災害認定為相同等級之災害規模，依環境與人口分佈特性，相同規模的災害對小型島嶼之衝擊將是大型島嶼之不等倍數。研究方法以聚落分佈之碎形關係設定島嶼型之災害規模，尋找聚落間之平均最小距離，由於臺灣之聚落間距較金門大，當災害同時影響二聚落時也將影響相同數量之住民，可視為相同等級之災害，相同等級之災害在臺灣之規模較在金門大，結果顯示相同規模之線形（面積型）災害對金門環境之影響為臺灣之2.64（7）倍，小型島嶼之災害規模認定確實不應沿用大型島嶼或大陸型地區之標準，小型島嶼災害類別與規模應重新檢視，以訂定合宜之防救災策略。

Government has always overlooked the prevention and relief of insular disasters. The local government can only regulate developments or plan disaster relief in accordance with the laws and regulations established by central government. Notably, the land and resource limitations and other island unique geographic characteristics mean the types and scales of insular disaster differ markedly on small islands compared to continental areas or large islands such as Taiwan. Inadequate identification of disaster type or scale may not only cause misallocation of precious island relief resources but may also cause loss of life due to ineffective rescue efforts. This research aims to identify the major insular disasters on Kinmen, rank their importance and explore how the scale of disasters differs between small islands and large islands. Potential disasters affecting Kinmen are studied to rank their importance according to their casualties, financial losses, and occurrence frequency. The results show that in terms of severity, disasters affecting Kinmen follow the ranking: typhoon, maritime disaster, major fire, fog, land mine and explosive accident, air disaster, power plant incident, drought, earthquake, and seashore pollution. Another topic of this paper is to establish a scale for translating the severity of disasters between small and large islands. Scale transformation mainly rests on the assumption that the impacts of a disaster on two differently sized islands are equivalent when equal numbers of residents are affected. Once two adjacent villages are affected by a disaster, the number of residents affected would be the same, regardless of the size of the islands on which the villages are located. The average minimum distance between two adjacent villages thus is used to assess the equivalent sizes of two disasters affecting two different islands. Fractal analysis and the box counting method are employed to assess the distribution of the villages in Kinmen and Taiwan respectively. The average minimum distances between two adjacent villages on the two islands were calculated using GIS software and it was found that the environmental impact of a linear (area) form disaster on Kinmen is 2.64 (7) times that on Taiwan. This research clearly demonstrates that disasters with the same size in different islands have different environmental impacts on those islands. Therefore adequate disaster scale identification for small islands needs to be instituted to avoid disproportional destruction of island environments.