Lecture 1 - Key Concepts

Question 1

What is a natural disaster?

Answer 1

A natural event that causes injury, loss of life, damage to infrastructure, and/or economic loss.

Question 2

What are natural disasters typically caused by?

Answer 2

sudden release of energy stored over a much longer time

Question 3

What is the definition of return period?

Answer 3

average time between similar events at a given location

e.g. a damaging earthquake occurs on Vancouver Island on average every 20 years

Question 4

What is frequency and how do we calculate it?

Answer 4

average number of occurrences in a given time
1 / return period
e.g. Vancouver Island experiences on average 1/20 = 0.05 damaging earthquakes per year

Question 5

What is magnitude?

Answer 5

a measure of the amount of energy released

Question 6

For most disasters how is magnitude related to frequency?

Answer 6

magnitude is inversely proportional to frequency so large events occur less frequently than small events

Question 7

What is a hazard?

Answer 7

a natural event that is dangerous
they are inevitable and generally, they cannot be controlled
they can sometimes be exacerbated by human activity

Question 8

What is vulnerability in the context of natural disasters?

Answer 8

exposure and susceptibility to losses

can be reduced, but doing so can be costly, leading to tradeoffs

Question 9

What is risk in the context of natural disasters?

Answer 9

the likelihood that losses will occur

can be reduced, but doing so can be costly, leading to tradeoffs

Question 10

What is the equation linking hazard, vulnerability and risk?

Answer 10

risk = hazard x vulnerability

Question 11

In what ways may humans have influenced the number and size of forest fires in western Canada?

Answer 11

fuels
climate change
cigarettes
cars / machinery sparks
etc

Question 12

How has fracking in Oklahoma impacted the number of earthquakes?

Answer 12

the number of earthquakes has increased much more than expected

Question 13

How are hurricanes affected by climate change?

Answer 13

They are fuelled by warm sea temperatures.

They are getting bigger, stronger and slower possibly due to global warming and raising sea temperatures.

Question 14

What is emergency management?

Answer 14

Reducing risk through improvements to:
Disaster mitigation – preventing future hazards, or reducing their effects.
Preparedness – preparing to handle the emergency before it happens.
Response – responding safely to the emergency once it happens.
Recovery – recovering from the emergency after it happens.

Question 15

What is the current trend in natural disasters?

Answer 15

They are increasing in frequency - especially weather related ones.
They are also becoming more costly (human life and money).
Number of earthquakes with >10,000 or >50,000 fatalities is increasing greatly.