Abstract: Natural disasters are inevitable, but can be substantially reduced or mitigated by arranging human activities rationally to create the conditions for a harmonious coexistence of human and nature. Based on the studies of human’s adaptation to hazards, some quantitative and qualitative methods on the issue were reviewed. The quantitative methods mainly consist of multi-scale-subject adaptation analysis, adaptation of the common people at the bottom and the policy for adaptation to natural disaster. The qualitative methods mainly involved adaptation of the ecosystem, policies or strategies optimization and so on. The results are shown as follows. (1) Some physical and mathematical models or some joint evaluation patterns have become the mainstream of the qualitative methods. Studies on adaptation to natural disaster show a synthetical and detailed trend. Some system comprehensive analysis methods and local native knowledge become popular. (2) As regards to the starting points on the issue, there are two approaches, the top-down one and the bottom-up one, different from what they focused on, but there would be a new method to combine the bottom-up approach with the top-down one, which is the just point for comprehensive system analysis of social ecosystems adaptation to natural disaster. In the end, several research trends on adaptation to natural disasters in the future are discussed. These conclusions can provide reference for seeking for a comprehensive research method.

Key words: natural disaster adaptation, qualitative method, quantitative method, research methods