EQ3: How successful is the management of tectonic hazards and disasters?

Question 1

Why is there a rise in the number of reported natural disasters?

Answer 1

-Climate change
-Population increase/density
-Increase in urbanisation/more impermeable surfaces
-Improvements in technology for reporting
-Improvements in monitoring and recording events

Question 2

What does anthropogenic mean?

Answer 2

The human cause of climate change

Question 3

What are the current earthquake trends?

Answer 3

-No change in the number of earthquakes since 1980, around 15-40 each year
-Earthquake deaths are variable
-Fewer earthquake deaths overall than 30-40 years ago
-Increase in economic losses, around $20-40 billion per year

Question 4

What are the current volcano trends?

Answer 4

-Volcanic disasters are much less frequent, deaths are now rare
-Affects large numbers due to mass evacuations

Question 5

What is the reliability of disaster statistics?

Answer 5

-Deaths in remote areas are under recorded
-May not count secondary events
-Hard to analyse trends/patterns as major disasters skew the data
-Corrupt governments lie for money
-Bias from the media

Question 6

What is a mega disaster?

Answer 6

A large scale disaster on either a spatial scale, economic or human impact

Question 7

What is HILP?

Answer 7

A high-impact, low probability event
-Often tectonic mega-events and disasters are classed under this
-They are impossible to predict, but likely to occur over long time scales

Question 8

What is a multiple hazard zone?

Answer 8

Places where two or more natural hazards occur and in some cases can interact to produce complex disasters

Question 9

Why do some mega-cities have low hazard resilience?

Answer 9

-Too many people to evacuate
-Possibly no building regulations (rapid urbanisation, informal housing)
-Strain on services and resources
-Ecological imbalance (urbanisation destroys environments)