The problem which often lays over the disaster management practices is that social and community dimension of disasters are badly identified and assessed. This article discusses this problem and offers social impact assessment (SIA) as a tool for the uses of environmental disaster management. Here, the main questions concern the following: How can we understand and anticipate the consequences of environmental disasters and changes in the social and community level? What are suitable analytical concepts and methods for social impact assessment? This article introduces the concepts of social vulnerability, social resilience and community adaptation as central concepts in understanding the social nature of disaster. In addition, the article describes the kind of assessment experiences we have in this field.