Introduction

• Natural hazard: any natural process that can be dangerous to people

  • Can be geologic in origin (eg. earthquakes)

  • Can be meteorologic in origin (eg. thunder storms)

  • Can be biologic in origin (eg. invasive species)

• This class will focus on natural hazards with geological origins

• Ways to document natural hazards include:

  • Frequency: how often a natural hazard occurs

  • Duration: how often a natural hazard lasts

  • Areal extent: how big of an area a natural hazard effects

Humans at Risk

The Relationship Between People and the Environment

• Complex two-way relationship

• People are affected by the environmental conditions in which they live

• The environment is affected by the people who inhabit it

Measuring Risk

• Hazard risk: a measurement of how much danger natural hazards cause

  • Who’s vulnerable?

  • How vulnerable are they?

  • Partially defined by the likelihood of the hazard event itself and partly risk is defined by what would likely happen to the people effected by the event

• Risk assessment: the process of measuring risk

  • How many people are in the area and how close do they live to the hazard?

  • This can also go into human factors such as cultural and political climate, and how these may influence people’s responses to hazards

• Risk is often a product of the socioeconomic makeup of an area

• Some risk assessments compound various factors into a single risk assessment

  • These, however, often simplify death and destruction to simply numbers, often monetizing them

  • Eg. Risk = probability of the event * costs of the damages

• The insurance industry generally spends the most time, money, and effort on calculating risk assessments

  • A person who performs such assessments is an actuary

Responding to Risk

• Nonresponse

  • Choosing not to act or respond to a potentially risky situation such as a natural hazard

  • Most people live in places with long histories of habitation and communities with long histories of living with the environments of those places with some awareness and experience with the potential dangers

  • Sometimes, communities lack the resources to take effective action following natural disasters

• Action

  • Moving → many people lack the financial and logistical resources to move

  • Plan in advance, develop strategies to react to disasters before they occur

    • Community resilience: how well and how fast a community can recover from a disaster

    • Mitigation: attempts to anticipate the possibilities of natural hazards and develop ways to reduce the negative impacts of those event