Natural Hazard Intro Flashcards
What are the different types of natural events?
- Natural Phenomenon - a natural event that does not affect humans
- Natural hazards - refers to all atmospheric, hydrological and geological and wildfire phenomena that have the potential to affect humans, their structure, or their activities adversely
- Natural disaster - by the UN, a hazard event must have; 10 or more deaths, 100 people affected, a call for international assistance, a declaration of a state of emergency
What are the types of hazards?
- Geophysical – caused by earth processes
- Tsunami, earthquake, volcano, landslide/lahar - Atmospheric – processes operating in the atmosphere resulting in short-term (meteorological) or long-term (climatological) extreme weather or conditions
- Wildfire, drought, glacial lake outburst, storm surges, typhoon, fog, extreme temperature, hailstorm - Hydrological – caused by the occurrence, movement, and distribution of surface and underground water
- Avalanche, flood, wave action
Define risk?
The likelihood of a hazard causing harm
Define hazard?
Something that has the potential to harm you
Define vulnerability ?
The level of potential for loss during, or after, a natural hazard. It can vary over both time and space
Define hazard perception?
How much risk/potential we think a hazard has (as an individual)
What are the reasons for living in areas of risk?
- Unpredictability: don’t know when/where/magnitude of the hazard
- Lack of alternatives: due to social, political, economic and cultural factors people can’t/don’t want to leave behind their homes/land/employment
- Changing level of risk: places that were relatively safe may have become more at risk e.g. due to climate change or deforestation which has led to more flooding
- Cost/benefit: some hazardous areas have benefits which might outweigh the risk of the hazard e.g. Californian cities that have a risk of earthquakes
What does the Park Model show
Changes to quality of life over time, when an area experiences a hazard
What are the pros and cons of the Park model
Pro
- flexible time axis so can apply to all scenarios
- useful to compare different events / curves
- helps to visualise the impact of the hazard
- simplistic model so easy to understand as only accounts for 1 hazard
Cons
- model is general - doesn’t account for different levels of development and other factors affecting distribution and recovery
- model does not take into account that different places will take much longer to reach different stages
- doesn’t show that not all countries will return to normality
- ‘normality’ doesn’t give much context - varies for each country / place
What does the Hazard Management Cycle Show?
What are the pros and cons of the Hazard Management Cycle?
What are the factors that influence people’s perception ?
- Socio-economic status: how wealthy/powerful you are
- Level of education: how much education you received
- Occupation/employment status: what you do/don’t do for a living
- Religion, cultural/ethnic background
- Family and marital status: if you have/don’t have a family
- Past experience: of a hazard might change your perceptions of that hazard
- Values, personality and expectations: different characters might think different things about the hazard
What are the responses to natural hazards?
- Fatalism
Such hazards are natural events that are part of living in an area. Some communities would say they are ‘God’s will’. Action is therefore usually direct and concerned with safety. Losses are accepted as inevitable, and people remain where they are. - Adaption
People see that they can prepare for, and therefore survive, the event(s) by prediction, prevention and/or protection, depending upon the economic and technological circumstances of the area. - Fear
The perception that of the hazard is such that people feel so vulnerable to an event that they are no longer able to face living in the area and move away to regions perceived to be unaffected by the hazard.
