Geography Edexcel AS

World at risk

Hazards: Contents
Types of hazards
Key Terms
Risks and Vulnerability
Natural Hazard or Disaster?
Is the world becoming more hazardous?
Human factors
Falling Deaths
Increasing Numbers of people affected
El Nino & La Nina
Distributions: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, Slides,

Drought, Storms
Hazard Hotspots: California, Philippines - Compared

What is a hazard?
Every year many events around the world happen that may

be described as natural hazards

For a natural event or phenomena to become a hazard it
has to involve people
It is the way that social systems and environments link
together that determines whether an event becomes a
hazard
What is a natural event in an uninhabited location can be a
severe hazard in another place where people are involved
Definition?
A natural hazard is a natural event or process which affects
people eg causing loss of life or injury, economic damage,
disruption to peoples lives or environmental degradation.

Hazards: Two Types of

Hydro-meteorological
Geophysical
hazards
Caused by running water and its

Caused by earth processes.

They can be caused by either

internal earth processes of

tectonic activity eg volcanoes,
earthquakes, tsunamis
Or by external processes of
geomorphological origin
involving mass movement eg
landslides, rockfalls, rockslides
Read P 9-11 Pearson

processes (hydro) and those

associated with weather patterns
(meteorological)
Includes floods, debris and
mudflows
Tropical cyclone/hurricane, storm
surges, thunder and hail storms,
tornadoes, blizzards and other
sever storm
Droughts , bush fires temperature
extremes, sand and dust storms
Read p 6-8 Pearson

Both geophysical and hydrometeorological?

These two types of hazard sometimes

overlap
Eg a snow avalanche may be hydrometeorological(snow-ice) in origin, but
geophysical as an event (mass movement)
Eg a landslide

CAN GLOBAL WARMING BE SEEN AS A

NATURAL HAZARD?

a)Which of these ten are hazards

then?
1. A b)Are
cyclone affecting
Kong
they Hong
hydrological,
2. A hurricane passing over a remote unpopulated island
meteorological, geomorphological or
3. A flood in a rural area which floods the roads, but does not
affect
any houses
tectonic?
4. A volcano erupting in isolation in the middles of the Pacific

ocean
5. An avalanche in a ski resort
6. An avalanche high on the mountain slopes remote from any
settlement
7. A tsunami wave 50cm high off the coast of Japan
8. An earthquake in Kashmir, Northern Pakistan
9. A drought in Australias outback
10. A landslide in a favela in Rio

Na-tech or quasi-natural hazards- where natural hazards

trigger a technological hazard eg flooding causes a dam to

burst
Techno hazards technological hazards such as Chernobyl
power plant exploding
Chronic hazards such as global warming and el-nino/la
nina may increase the threat of other environmental
hazards eg sea level rise increases the risk of coastal floods
Super hazards catastrophic Earth changes from super
volcanoes, tsunamis and asteroid strikes
Context hazards widespread (global) threat due to
environmental factors such as climate change or a super
volcano.

Environmental and context

hazards

Hazards: Key Terms

Disasters: are the realisation of the hazard

to cause social impacts such as loss of

livelihoods, lives and economic impact such
as damage to goods and property.
It especially occurs in areas where
environments and people are vulnerable.

Vulnerability: is a high risk combined with

an inability of individuals and communities to

cope.

How a hazard becomes a

disaster Dreggs model

Dreggs model shows how some kind of overlap is

needed for a hazard to become a disaster.

A disaster is a matter of scale it is simply bigger than
a natural hazard.
In 1990 Swiss Re insurance defined a disaster as an
event that where at least 20 people died, or insured
damage of over 16 million US dollars was caused.
But values and currencies change all the time!
It depends on how vulnerable the people are that are
exposed to it.
More of the worlds population are living in areas
where they are exposed to hazards eg Bangladesh ( to
floods and cyclones), favelas in Brazil (to landslides)
The greater the scale of the natural hazard and the
more exposed the people are, the greater the disaster
is likely to be.

How a disaster becomes a

hazard (Philip Allan)

Hazards: Vulnerability
Shaped by underlying state of human

development, includes inequalities in

income, opportunity and political power.
Poverty stricken people often depend upon
the land for food, live in poor eco-systems
and have poor health.
The result of this is that high risk is
combined with inability to cope with the
adverse impact of natural hazards and
climate change.

Hazards: Natural Hazard or

Disaster?
Hazard

Disaster

Anatural disasteris

The actual or

the effect of anatural

hazard(e.g.,flood,torna
do,hurricane,volcanic
eruption,earthquake,
orlandslide). It leads to
financial, environmental
or human losses. The
resulting loss depends
on the vulnerability of
the affected population
to resist the hazard, also
called their resilience

potential interaction
between extreme
natural events and
human activities
that may result in
damage, disruption,
death or injury

Risk
Risk is the exposure of people to a hazardous event and the

process of establishing the probability that a hazard event

of a particular magnitude will occur within a given period.
The types of risk in order of reduced severity are:
Hazards to people death, severe injury, disease, stress
Hazards to goods economic losses, infrastructure damage,

property damage
Hazards to environment pollution, loss of flora and fauna,
loss of amenity
Exposure to a hazard is not always avoidable. People may

place themselves at risk! See p. 5 Philip Allan

Risk: why do people remain

exposed to hazards?

UNPREDICTABILITY:

Not always predictable when or where an event will take place. Also difficult
to know the likely magnitude of the event.
Human activity and physical changes also mean that for example sea level is
rising giving a greater chance of lowlands flooding. Moreover deforestation of
drainage basins increase the frequency and magnitude of flooding.
LACK OF ALTERNATIVES:
Difficult to uproot and move to another location giving up homes, land and
employment. Often the worlds most vulnerable are the poor who are forced
to live on unsafe floodplains or steep hillsides.
CHANGING LEVELS OF RISK:
Deforestation can make an area once safe from flooding more susceptible. As
can the effects of global warming eg sea level rise
RUSSIAN ROULETTE:
Optimism, turning a blind eye, acts of god, part of the living process.
People are comforted by the statistics which show that the risk of death is
lower than that from influenza or car accidents. They also believe that if a
high magnitude event occurs then it may be safe for a few years, this is not
always true.
COST V. BENEFIT:
Many hazardous areas offer advantages that in peoples minds outweigh the
risk. Flood plains for example have very fertile soils and rich volcanic soils
are also attractive.

The risk perception process

Vulnerability quadrant (Philip

Allan)

Hazards: Measuring Risk

(p 7 Philip Allan and p 12 Pearson)

Frequency or magnitude of hazard (H) x

vulnerability (V)
Risk (R)=
Capacity to cope or adapt
(C)

The risks are getting worse in some countries because:

1. the frequency is increasing with climate change.
2. Vulnerability is increasing as a result of unsustainable
development leading to poor land use and
environmental degradation.
3. The capacity to cope is decreasing owing to poverty
and urbanisation.
Risks are lower in more developed countries because
they have resources and technology to provide
protection.

A year of wild weather:2011

or 2010

1. Redo the hazards diary case study, updating

it for either 2011 or 2010. You should try to

extend the columns to include geophysical
hazards, and if you want the higher grades, Natech, techno and chronic hazards as well.
2. Overall whats the worst hazard and why?
3. Crucially, make sure you include the basic
impacts and death tolls if appropriate to help
back-up your point for the previous question.
You can then refer to these in preparation for
the June exams.

Use the case study example (p11 Philip

Allan) as a guide for what you need to do

here.
MunichRe Reports will help you, as will bits
of other research on the BBC News website
(e.g. type in volcano / earthquake etc), or
GoogleNews.