Tectonic Topic 3 Flashcards
What is tectonic disaster risk?
Tectonic disaster risk refers to the potential damage to properties injuries and loss of lives from a disaster in a given period
What is a disaster risk management
- Prevent: Using strategy include the designing hazard-resistant buildings to ensure structures can withstand hazards
- Reduce: Strategies include tsunami and earthquake early monitoring and warning systems, this enables timely evacuation
- After: Strategies include insurance coverage which offers financial payout to rebuild when properties are damaged or destroyed
What is some serious environmentally consequences
- Tectonic hazards destroy entire ecosystems and causing biodiversity loss
- The debris pollutes the river and kill aquatic lives
- The debris may block rivers causing floods that can damage nearby ecosystem
What are some social consequences?
- Tectonic hazards can result in injuries and loss of lives
- People may be homeless as houses are destroyed
- The sea water brought inland by tsunami may contaminate wells and other sources of drinking water
- Individuals may suffer psychological trauma
What are some serious of Economic consequences
- Can cause destruction of homes and properties
- individuals may suffer financially as it is costly to repair or rebuild their damaged homes
- Governments need to spend money to repair and rebuild
Why is it important to reduce disaster risks
- The (social, economic, environmentally) can be very severe
- Developing countries are often disproportionately affected by tectonic hazards because they often lack the capacity to (prevent, reduce, and manage)
What factors affect the Earthquake risks across places?
- Nature: Duration of shaking and time of shaking
- Vulnerable: Quality of building design and construction. Soil and rock properties
- Exposure: Population density. Distance from epicentre
What factors affect the extent of volcanic eruptions across places?
- Nature: Chemical composition of magma
- Vulnerable: Availability of surface and groundwater facilitating the development of lahars. Prevailing wind conditions affecting distribution of tephra
- Exposure: Presence of human settlements
The nature of the hazard that influence risks caused by earthquakes include Duration of the shaking
- The length of time of ground shaking can influence the extent of disaster risks
- The longer the duration of ground shaking, the more damaging an earthquake will be.
The nature of the hazard that influence risks caused by earthquakes include time of shaking
- The time of the day influences the activities carried out by people and how they respond when the earthquakes strike
How can risks caused by earthquakes be influenced by the quality of building design and construction?
- Quality of building design and construction plays a huge part in determining the extent of risks
- The poorer the quality of building design and construction, the more vulnerable the buildings are to collapsing, leading to more trapped people
How can risks caused by earthquake be influenced by soil and rock properties
- It can potentially open the area up to other earthquake hazards like liquefaction
- When the soil is saturated and loose, shaking may result in liquefaction
- The softer the soil, the higher the disaster risks
Why does the seismic waves get amplified when travelling from hard rocks to soft soil?
- Passing from rocks to soil, he waves get slower but become bigger
- Soft, loose soil will shake more intensely than hard rock increasing the likelihood of structure collapsing
How can risks caused by earthquakes be influenced by the exposure of population density?
- The higher the population density, the greater the number of people and buildings that are exposed to the earthquakes
How can risks caused by earthquakes be influence by the exposure of distance from epicentre?
- The nearer the city is to the epicentre, the greater the number of people and buildings exposed to the hazard hence the greater the disaster risks
- When the city is nearer to the epicentre, less energy is absorbed by the rocks before the seismic waves reach the city
- The seismic waves reaching the city will be stronger causing more violent shaking
How can risks caused by volcanic eruptions be influenced by the nature of low silica magma?
- Lava can flow far from the volcano before cooling
- Damage infrastructure and properties over large areas
- Rarely kill people, as they can avoid the pathway
How can risks caused by volcanic eruptions be influenced by the nature of high silica magma?
- May form highly destructive pyroclastic flows causing widespread damage to infrastructure etc
- Explosion of volcanic materials may strike people and properties
How can risks caused by volcanic eruptions be influence by the availability of surface and groundwater?
- The great the availability of surface and groundwater can produce more lahars to develop.
- Increases vulnerability of people because of increase in lahars burying properties
How can risks caused by volcanic eruptions be influenced by the prevailing wind conditions?
- Affects the distribution of ashfalls and tephra
- The larger the areas of the spread of air pollutants, the higher the chance of people breathing it in, causing health problems
How can disaster caused by volcanic eruptions be influenced by exposure to volcanic eruptions?
- Presence of human settlement increases the exposure of people
- People still choose to stay there is because of:
- Volcanic soils are rich and fertile, ideal for farming
- Geothermal energy can harnessed to provide electricity
- Valuable minerals.
How can community resilience be strengthened?
- Involving the abilities of community living in hazard-prone zones to resist, adapt, and recover
How can the land use planning reduce exposure to hazards?
- Aims to reduce the community’s exposure by controlling and minimising development near high-risk areas
- Using hazard maps, strict guidelines to control development
How does hazard-resistant building designs reduce vulnerability?
- They can withstand the shaking:
- Using shock absorbers or dampers in buildings to absorb vibrations
- Reinforcing buildings using diagonal cross braces to retain building shape - Prevent building from swaying to much
How does monitoring and warning systems reduce vulnerability?
- Can help make predictions and send warnings about potential hazards
- Warning enables people to evacuate to a safer place
How does increasing preparedness build community resilience?
- Provides people with knowledge of the hazards and how to respond to them
- First-aid training enable people to administer basic medical care
- Conducting evacuation drills enables people to be familiar with procedures and routes
Why is extent of community’s resources a challenge in building resilience?
- Lack of resource like technological and Fianacial resources
- May influence the ability of the community
- Developing countries often lack resources
- Governments of developing country may choose to prioritise economic development
Why is the capability of the community to organise itself for disasters a challenge?
- It may limit the community’s ability to respond and recover
- Their capability may be limited because of lack of efforts to educate and train or political instability or corruption
What is disaster management
- How communities can adopt strategies to respond, search and rescue, timely evacuate, provision of basic social and psychological services
Strategy: Search and Rescue efforts
- Important life-saving response involving finding and saving survivors
- Aim to rescue largest amount in short period
- Having skilled people to rescue can save time to locate and evacuate
Strategy: Timely Evacuation
- Moving people away from areas at risk of hazards
Strategy: provision of basic social and psychological services
- Water (prevent dehydration)
- Food (prevent starvation)
- Healthcare (providing medical attention)
- Psychological services: help survivors cope with psychological trauma which can last for a long time after the disaster.
Strategies to recover from disasters
- Constructing hazard-resistant buildings and infrastructure
- Retrofitting surviving buildings with hazard features
- Allowing residents to eventually return home
- Providing housing assistance
Challenges: Lack of domestic resources
- May not have technological and financial resources to respond effectively
- hamper the disaster respond efforts
Challenges: Engaging in relevant stakeholders to collaborate
- Disagreements from other stakeholders on disaster management strategies
- Stakeholders underestimate or lack awareness of the disaster risks and need
- High cost of integrating disaster management
