Concept of hazards

Question 1

The park model (the disaster response curve)

Answer 1

Its aim is to show the effects of a hazard on quality of life over a sequence of time.
Stage 1 - Occurs prior to the event and shows that quality of life is at its normal equilibrium level.
Stage 2 - Where the hazard occurs and, again, at this point quality of life is at normal level.
Stage 3 - Search, rescue and care is underway. Quality of life drops. Stays low = several hours –> several days depending severity of hazard and level of development of the region/country.
Stage 4 - Relief strategies are underway and there’s an organised programme of help. It can take a variable amount of time, from hours and days to weeks and months to reach this stage, but quality of life improves at this time.
Stage 5 - Refers to long term human response; rebuilding and restoring normality. Quality of life returns to normal and in some cases can be higher than it was originally; especially if the repairs improve on the old infrastructure etc

Question 2

The Hazard Management Cycle.

Answer 2

The Hazard Management Cycle outlines the stages of responding to events, showing how the same stages take place after every hazard.
Preparedness - Being ready for an event to occur (public awareness, education, training)
Response - Immediate action taken after event (evacuation, medical assistance, rescue)
Recovery - Long-term responses (restoring services, reconstruction)
Mitigation - Strategies to lessen effects of another hazard (barriers, warning signals developed, observatories)

Question 3

Human Responses to Hazards

Answer 3

Hazards can be responded to in a passive way (making no effort to lessen a hazard) or in an active way.
Fatalism is a passive response to a hazard.
● Fatalism: Hazards are uncontrollable natural events, any losses should be accepted –> nothing that can be done to stop them.
Active responses to hazards are any strategy used to overall contribute to a lower hazard risk.
● Prediction: Using scientific research and past events in order to know when a hazard will take place –> warnings delivered and impacts of hazard reduced.
In some cases, hazards may also be prevented when predicted early enough (e.g. predicting wildfires from climatic red flags).
● Adaptation: Attempting to live with hazards by adjusting lifestyle choices so that vulnerability to the hazard is lessened (e.g. earthquake proof houses).
● Mitigation: Strategies carried out to lessen the severity of a hazard (e.g. sandbags to offset impact of flooding).
● Management: Coordinated strategies to reduce hazard’s effects. This includes prediction, adaptation, mitigation.
● Risk sharing: A form of community preparedness, community shares the risk posed by a natural hazard and invests collectively to mitigate the impacts of future hazards.

Question 4

Relationship to hazard

Answer 4

Incidence: Frequency of a hazard. This is not affected by the strength of a hazard, it is just how often a hazard occurs.
Intensity: the power of a hazard i.e. how strong it is and how damaging the effects are.
Magnitude: the size of the hazard, usually this is how a hazard’s intensity is measured.
High magnitude + high intensity hazards = worse effects
Distribution: where hazards occur geographically.
High hazard distribution –> a lot of management strategies, those living there are adapted to the hazardous landscape –> dominates the area more so than in places with low hazard distribution.
Level of development: economic development will affect how a place can respond to a hazard, so a hazard of the same magnitude may have very different effects in two places of contrasting levels of development.

Question 5

Hazard

Answer 5

A potential threat to human life and property caused by an event.
- Can be human caused or occur naturally (natural hazards).
- An event will only become a hazard when it is a threat to people. E.g. if a hurricane hit an uninhabited desert island it would not be classed as a hazard.

Question 6

Geophysical

Answer 6

Hazards caused by land processes, majorly tectonic plates (e.g.
volcanoes)

Question 7

Atmospheric

Answer 7

Hazards caused by atmospheric processes and the conditions created because of these, such as weather systems (e.g. wildfires)

Question 8

Hydrological

Answer 8

Hazards caused by water bodies and movement (e.g. floods)

Question 9

Hazard perception

Answer 9

People have different viewpoints of how dangerous hazards are and what risk they pose.
These perceptions are dependent on lifestyle factors such as economic and cultural factors. For example, a person who is wealthy is perhaps less likely to view a hazard as dangerous as they may have the money to respond to it.