What Are Natural Hazards Flashcards
What is a hazard?
A hazard is a threat of substantial loss of life, impact upon life or damage to property that can be caused by an event both human or naturally occurring
What is a natural hazard?
Natural hazards are events which are perceived to be a threat to people, the built environment and natural environment. They occur in the physical environments of the atmosphere, lithosphere and hydrosphere. Human activity and increase the risk
What is a disaster?
A disaster occurs as a result of a hazard that causes widespread disruption to a community or region with significant demographic, economic and environmental losses, and which the affected community is unable to deal with adequately without outside help
What is a risk?
Exposer to a hazardous event which can lead to a fatal disaster
What is vulnerability?
Geographical conditions that increases the susceptibility of a community to a hazard or to the impact of the hazardous event
What is perception?
How a threat is viewed by the government and organisations and how their reactions affect civilians
What does the hazards-of-place model of vulnerability show and look like?
It consists of 8 linking points within circles
The model shows the relationship between risk and vulnerability of where people live and factors which contribute to that
What factors contribute to perception?
- past experience
- personal values and personality
- socio-economic status
- level of education
- employment status
- religion and cultural background
- family situation
What is resilience?
The sustained ability of individuals or communities to be able to utilise available resources to respond to, withstand and recover from the effects of natural hazard events
What are prediction, protection and preparation?
Prediction- giving warnings and improving monitoring
Protection- the act of implementing strategies to protect life, vegetation and infrastructure
Preparation- prepared for an event such as emergency medicine supplies, evacuation measures and trained aid teams
What does mitigate mean?
To mitigate is to minimise the effects of an event by making it less severe, less disastrous and less harmful
What is hazard incidence?
Evacuations and services increase depending on the magnitude of the disaster
What is the intensity?
Intensity is the amount of force, magnitude of distasteful so a greater intensity the more human response and management strategies are needed
What is distribution?
Refers to the special coverage of a hazard
What is adaptation?
Attempts of people and communities to live with hazardous events by,for example, adjusting there living conditions to reduce vulnerability levels
What is fatalism?
A view of natural hazards which suggests people cannot influence or shape the outcome therefore, nothing can be done to mitigate against it.
People with this attitude put in place no preventatives be measured.
Believe the event is “Gods will”
What is fear?
The perception of the hazard is such that people feel so vulnerable to an event that they are no longer able to face living in that area
What are the 3 key responses to natural hazards?
Adaptation
Fatalism
Fear
What are primary impacts?
The effects of a hazard which result directly from the event
E.g eruption, pyroclastic flow
What are secondary impacts?
The effects that result from the primary impact of the hazard event.
E.g earthquake, fires and tsunamis
What determines the severity of a hazard?
Duration Magnitude Predictability Regularity Frequency Speed of onset Spatial concentration Areal extent Number of hazards
What is the duration?
The length of time a hazard lasts for, the longer the hated lasts, the more severe it’s likely to be
What is the magnitude?
The strength of the hazard, most hazards are measured in a scale e.g richer scale or VEI so, stronger a hazard the more severe
What is predictability?
Some hazards can be predicted easier than others, volcanoes usually give warning signs before eruptions
However others like earthquakes are harder to predict so, hazards that are harder to predict are more serious
What is regularity?
How often a hazard happens and how quick in succession e.g a earthquake followed by multiple aftershocks, the severity is likely to be greater
What is frequency?
The return interval of hazards of certain sizes,
E.g an earthquake with a magnitude of over 8.0 happens on adverse once a year whereas earthquakes of 3 to 4 could happen many times a day
If a hazard is strong but less frequent it will have a bigger impact
What is it meant by speed of onset?
If the peak of the hazard arrives first or arrives quickly
E.g an earthquake then the effects are likely to be worse than one that arrives slowly
What is the special concentration?
Where the hazard is located or centred
Earthquakes are on boundaries therefore can be mitigated better for than a tropical storm
What is areal extent?
If a hazard covers a large area
Drought hit east Africa would be worse than a flood hitting one village
What is it meant by number of hazards?
If a location is hit by multiple hazards that the affects can be more severe
What is the general rule if a hazards magnitude increases?
The frequency of the hazard happening decreases
What is the disaster/risk management cycle?
It illustrates the ongoing process by which governments, businesses and society plan for and reduce the impacts of disasters, react during and immediately following an event and take steps to recover after an event
What is the park impact/response model?
It is a graph which measured relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction after a disaster measured against time and quality of life
It sees how long a country will take to return to normality or to reach improvements
If there is a graduating slope, what does this suggest?
The country is probably a LIC
Slow rehabilitation and reconstruction
Slow as aid from other countries
If there is a steep, short gradient, what does this tell us?
Probably a HIC
Quick to recover
Wealthy
What is relief?
The immediate local and possibly global response in the form of aid, expertise and search and rescue
What is rehabilitation?
A longer phase lasting weeks or months, when infrastructure and services are restored
What is reconstruction?
Restoring to the same, or better, quality of life as before the event took place
