The effect of disturbance is a common phenomenon in any physical system. Although the nature of the disturbance can vary from system to system, the effect remains the same and leads to errors in measurement as well as control of the system. Thus, to control a system effectively, sufficient study on disturbance modelling is required. The paper reviews pertinent literature on the effects of disturbances in various systems. Different signals are used to model disturbances in different systems. This paper explores and discusses these characteristic signals and equations used to describe disturbances in different systems. The study also includes a survey of the efficient control techniques offered in relevant literature to limit the effects of disturbances. Furthermore, the effectiveness of disturbance observers in disturbance attenuation is demonstrated via simulation using MATLAB/Simulink.