Tectonic Processes and Hazards EQ2 Flashcards

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1
Q

What is the definition of a natural hazard?

A

A perceived natural or geophysical event that has the potential to threaten both life and property.

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2
Q

What is the definition of a natural disaster?

A

The realisation of a hazard when in causes a significant impact of a vulnerable population. 10 or more people killed or 100 or more people affected. Impact are serious disruptions to the functioning of a community, creating widespread losses and impacts.

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3
Q

What is the Deggs model?

A

It shows the interaction between hazards, disaster and human vulnerability. With a Venn diagram with the hazardous event on one side and a vulnerable population of the other side overlapping to cause a disaster.

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4
Q

What is the determining the relationship between risk, hazards and people difficult?

A

Prediction is key to understanding risk
- unpredictability (timing, magnitude and location of the event can vary)
- lack of alternatives (people may stay in a hazardous event due to lack of alternatives)
- dynamic hazards (the threat is not constant and is constantly changing)
- cost benefit (benefit of staying in a hazardous location outweigh the negatives)
- Russian Roulette reaction (the acceptance of risk)

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5
Q

What is the hazard risk equation?

A

The relationship between hazards and disaster can be understood using the hazard risk equation
Risk = (hazard x vulnerability)/capacity to cope

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6
Q

What is resilience?

A

Resilience is the ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazard risk resist, absorb and recover (‘bounce back’) from the effect of a hazard.

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7
Q

How is resilience defined?

A

According to the UNISDR resilience is determined by the degree to which the community has the necessary resources and capability of organising itself both prior to during the time of need.

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8
Q

What does a community with a high resilience and high capacity to cope have?

A
  • emergency evacuation, rescue and relief systems
  • they react quickly by helping each other, reducing the amount of people affected
  • land use planning reducing number at risk
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9
Q

What is the definition of risk?

A

The exposure of people to a hazardous event. It’s the probability of a hazard occurring that evade river the loss of lives and or livelihood.

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10
Q

How does age of a population affect a communities resilience?

A

Ages is a significant factor, with children and the elderly likely to suffer much more from a range of hazards. It is shown by the disaster risk and age index.

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11
Q

What does the disaster risk and age index highlight?

A

Complied by the UNISDR it highlights
- an trend of ageing populations
- the acceleration of risk in world increasingly exposed to a range of hazards
E.g. 56% of the people who died in the Japan 2011 Tsunami were 65 or over.

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12
Q

What is the Pressure and Release model?

A

The PAR model suggests that the socio-economic context of a hazard is important. In poor badly governed (root causes) places with rapid change and low capacity (dynamic pressures) and low coping capacity (unsafe conditions) combine with natural hazards to create a disaster.

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13
Q

What is included in root causes on the PAR model?

A

Limited access to power, structure and resources and poor governance.

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14
Q

What is included in dynamic pressure in the PAR model?

A

Lack of
- appropriate skills
- training
Macro forces
- rapid population change
- rapid urbanisation
- deforestation
- dept repayments

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15
Q

What is included in unsafe conditions in the PAR model?

A
  • fragile physical environment
  • fragile local economy
  • vulnerable society
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16
Q

How does the factors in the PAR model progress to form high vulnerability?

A

Root causes (limited access to power and resources), create vulnerability as they result in inadequacies in training and standards in government (dynamic pressures). These dynamic pressures produce unsafe conditions in the physical and social environment. Physically unsafe environment induce dangerous locations and buildings with low resilience to hazards and economic being inadequacies in preparedness.

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17
Q

How can the PAR model be used for Haiti’s earthquake?

A

Root causes
- $1200 GDP per capita (low)
- 50% of population under 20 years (high dependency)
Dynamic pressures
- lack of education, training and investment
- rapid population change and urbanisation
Unsafe conditions
- 25% of people live in extreme poverty
- 80% of Port-au-Prine housing is informal slums

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18
Q

What are a social impacts of tectonic hazards?

A

Social impacts include anything that has affect a community or an individual . This includes death, injury and wider health impacts such as psychological ones.

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19
Q

What are economic impacts of a tectonic hazard?

A

This includes any financial impacts that the hazard has caused. This can include loss of property, businesses, infrastructure and economic opportunities.

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20
Q

What is environmental impacts of a tectonic hazard?

A

The effect of a tectonic hazard on the environment. This can be damage or destructive of habitats or physical systems.

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21
Q

How has the impact of different tectonic hazards changed over time?

A
  • the impacts from volcanic eruptions are very small and still declining (especially death toll)
  • earthquakes still have a very large impacts as significant ones and common and widespread
  • tsunami impacts still have very large impacts although they are infrequent.
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22
Q

How do impacts very between developed and developing countries?

A
  • although economic costs tend to be higher in developed nations (more advanced technology and infrastructure), developing countries have greater proportional economic impacts.
  • deaths in developed counties are normally lower (better governed and development) then in LICs
  • only a small promotion (1%) will experience direct exposure to volcanic activity
  • 8% of population in the poorest countries exposed to natural hazards but only just over 1% in richer nations.
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23
Q

What factors affect economic losses?

A
  • levels of development
  • insured vis non insured losses
  • population density
  • degree of urbanisation / land value
  • relative i,pacts in a counties GDP (between 1998-2017 1.8% of developing countries GDP in economic losses due to tectonic hazard compared with 0.4% in HICs)
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24
Q

What is the definition of magnitude?

A

Magnitude can be viewed as the size or strength of the tectonic events. Generally, larger magnitude events tend to have larger impact.

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25
Q

What are the three ways in which earthquake are measured?

A
  • Richter Scale
  • Mercalli Scale
  • Moment Magnitude Scale (MMS)
26
Q

What is the Richer Scale?

A

This is a measurement of the height of the waves produced by an earthquake. It is an absolute scale.
Scale from 0-9

27
Q

What is the Mercalli Scale?

A

The Mercalli scales measures earthquake intensity on a scale of I - XII. It measures the expedited impacts of an earthquake, meaning it is a relative scale. It uses a series of key repossess such as damage to structure and movement to furniture.
C > can’t be used easily to compare earthquakes as shaking experienced and damage depends on other factors

28
Q

What is the moment magnitude scale?

A

Measures the seismic movement of the earthquake (energy released), which is calculated from the amount of slip on the fault. It is a logarithmic scale measured from 0 - 9.

29
Q

What is the Volcanic Explosivity Index?

A

This is a relative measurement that measures the magnitude of a volcanic eruption. It is calculated by the volume of ejected products, height of eruption and duration. It is scaled form a 0 - 8.

30
Q

What is the Volcanic Explosivity Index?

A

This is a relative measurement that measures the magnitude of a volcanic eruption. It is calculated by the volume of ejected products, height of eruption and duration. It is scaled form a 0 - 8.

31
Q

How can tectonic hazards be compared?

A

Using hazard profiles to compare the physical processes that the hazards share.

32
Q

What is a tectonic hazard profile?

A

A technique used to rye and understand the physical characteristics of different types of hazard by comparing the certain physical process which all hazards share.

33
Q

What are the physical processes compared in a hazard profile?

A
  • magnitude
  • speed of onset
  • duration
  • areal extent
  • spatial predictability
  • frequency
34
Q

What is the difficulty when using hazard profiles?

A

One of the difficulties is the degree of reliability as it is extremely difficult to compare across hazards, as they all have different impacts on society and varying spatial and temporal distributions.

35
Q

What are the characteristics of the highest risk hazards?

A
  • high magnitude, low frequency (HILP)
  • rapid speed of onset with low spatial predictability
  • regional areal extend
36
Q

What is the disaster risk index?

A

This index seeks to combine physical exposure to hazards with vulnerability. It helps to demonstrate how risk varies globally through developed, emerging and developing countries?

37
Q

How can a hazard profile show the severity of the 2005 Kashmir, earthquake?

A

2005 Kashmir earthquake, Pakistan was ranked as one of the OST destructive in recent decades with
- magnitude of 7.6
- rapid speed of onset (no chance of evacuation)
- large areal extend of 1000km2
- shortish duration of 30 - 45 seconds
- low frequency (last earthquake happened on 1905)
- spatial prediction (Kashmir was in a ‘seismic gap’, a area of know risk that had not experienced an earthquake for a long time so education and risk awareness should have been done to reduce the impacts)

38
Q

What were the impacts of the 2005 Kashmir earthquake?

A
  • 87,000 deaths
  • 2.8 million homeless
  • 17,000 schools destroyed
  • 800 health centres destroyed
39
Q

How does development affect an areas vulnerability?

A

People’s basic health and nutritional status correlates strongly with their ability to survive disruptions to their livelihoods and normal wellbeing.

40
Q

How does levels of nutrition affect vulnerability?

A

Their is a clear relationship between nutrition and disease. After a hazard people are forced to find shelter and come into close contact with each other. People who are her ally under nourished are at greater risk of catching and spreading a disease due to weaker immune systems.
E.g. Haiti 2010 an estimated 9000 people died from Cholera

41
Q

How does economic development affect an areas hazard vulnerability and risk?

A

Economic development is essential to reduce vulnerability. Countries that have created economic development tend to have greater building quality, warning systems, education level, health services and equipment as well as normally better emergency responses. This all reduces vulnerability and increases a communities capacity to cope.

42
Q

Why does low development create high risk?

A
  • many people lack basic needs (sufficient water and food)
  • many housing is informally constructed with no regard for hazard resilience
  • access to health care is poor, disease and illness common
  • education levels are low so hazard perception and risk awareness is low
  • lack of a safety net (personal savings)
    E.g. Nepal 2015 40% of families loved below the poverty line
43
Q

What are cross cutting factors?

A

Cross- cutting factors are those which impacts and exacerbate the impacts of a tectonic hazard. They interacted with the human vulnerability worsening disaster risks.

44
Q

What are examples of cross cutting factors?

A
  • violence/ armed conflict
  • extreme weather (droughts)
  • incident or high risk of diseases such as HIV/AIDS
  • political corruption
  • climate change
45
Q

What is the risk-poverty index?

A

This is were low income households and communities suffer a disproportionate share of disaster losses and impacts.

46
Q

How does inequality increase risk?

A
  • asset inequality (housing, good or savings)
  • inequalities in entitlement (unequal access to public services and application in the rule of law)
  • political inequality (little voice)
  • social status (informal settings, regular income)
47
Q

What is governance?

A

The process by which a country or region is run. Good governance implies that national and local government are effective at keeping people safe, healthy and educated.

48
Q

How does governed affect vulnerability?

A
  • meeting basic needs
  • planning
  • environmental management
  • preparedness
  • corruption
  • freedom of speech
49
Q

How does governments meeting basic needs influence vulnerability?

A

When food supply, water supply and health needs are met the population is physically more able to cope with disaster. On the other hand if they are not spread of diseases, deaths and malnourishment is more abundant.

50
Q

How does governments ‘planning’ influence vulnerability?

A

Land use planning can reduce the risk of a hazard by preventing habitation of high risk areas, such as mountainous (landslide), areas prone to liquefaction and areas within a volcanic hazard zone

51
Q

How does governments environmental management influence vulnerability?

A
  • Secondary hazards such as landslides can be worsened by deforestation
  • The removal of natural defences (mangroves and coral bleaching) can increase impacts of Tsunamis.
52
Q

How does governments ‘preparedness’ influence vulnerability?

A
  • education and community preparation programmes raise awareness and teach people how to act (prepare, evacuate)
  • correct monitoring equipment can pre-warn of hazards
53
Q

How does government corruption influence vulnerability?

A

High corruption can led to
- siphoning of money meant for hazard protection
- uneven distribution of aid money
- bribery to build unsafe buildings (in land use areas or without the right mitigation’s)

54
Q

How does government ‘openness’ influence vulnerability?

A

Governments that are open, with free press and media can be held to account. This increases the likelihood that preparation and planning are taking place.

55
Q

What human and geographical factors affect vulnerability and resilience?

A
  • population density
  • degree of urbanisation
  • isolation and accessibility
  • vulnerability to secondary impacts (liquefaction, mountainous)
56
Q

How does population density impact vulnerability?

A

Highly populated areas may be
- harder to evacuate
- have a higher proportion of people affected

57
Q

How does degree of urbanisation impact vulnerability and resilience?

A

Impacts will be higher due to a higher concentration of
- people
- buildings and infrastructure

58
Q

How does isolation and accessibility impact vulnerability and resilience?

A
  • urban areas tend to be hit harder by the initial impacts of the disaster
  • the isolation and inaccessibly makes rescue and relief efforts harder in rural areas
59
Q

What are the main factors affecting the vulnerability and resilience of a community?

A
  • levels of development
  • governance
  • geographical factors
60
Q

CASE STUDIES

A

Emerging, developing and developed