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47 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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What is a natural hazard |
natural process that poses a threat to human life or property |
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What is a natural disaster |
situation where a natural event causes significant loss of life or property which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to a national or international level for external assistance |
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What is "risk" |
a product of exposure and hazard risk = exposure * hazard + (vulnerability - resilience) |
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Cyclicity |
event that occurs with some regularity |
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Mitigation |
efforts to reduce damage from expected future natural hazards |
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Probability estimates |
likelihood of a specific event occurring within a certain time |
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What are the major disaster groups? |
climatological - temperature, drought, wildfire hydrological - flood, mass movement geophysical - earthquakes, volcanic eruptions |
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Vulnerability |
measure of a population's susceptibility to impacts of hazard |
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Resilience |
measure of a populations ability to recover from an event |
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Aleatory Uncertainty |
uncertainty due to physical variability of a system - we cannot reduce this uncertainty no matter how much data we collect |
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Epistemic Uncertainty |
uncertainty related to lack of knowledge of a system - if we understood it better we could reduce this |
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Shallow Uncertainty |
probability is well understood and well behaved, we have reasonably good confidence in probability of future events |
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Deep Uncertainty |
Many variables are unknown or uknowable |
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What are the four hazard paradigms |
Engineering, behavioral, development, complexity |
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What is the engineering paradigm |
Identify physical causes of natural hazards then build structures to defend against them -does not take into account the social component |
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What is the behavioral paradigm |
natural hazards are not purely physical - how to change human behavior to reduce risk - short-term warning and long-term planning |
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What is the development paradigm |
Focused on human vulnerability, economic and political factors and it is believed that disasters result from underdevelopment and inequality |
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Primary mission of the Federal Emergency Management Agency |
support citizens and first responders to ensure that as a nation we work together to build, sustain and improve our capability to prepare for, protect against, respond to, recover from and mitigate all hazards |
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Emphasis of White and Haas' paper |
reliance on technology to keep us safe |
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Why are disaster loses increasing |
more infrastructure, climatic changes, population increase and relocation, reliance on early warning systems and reliance on engineering solutions |
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What is sustainable mitigation |
maintain and enhance environmental quality, quality of life, foster local resiliency and responsibility, foster vibrant local economies, ensure social equality and adopt local consensus building |
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What is carrying capacity |
the maximal population size of a given species that an area can support without reducing its ability to support the same species in the future |
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What did White/Haas' paper suggest for improvement in hazard mitigation |
warning systems, more active insurance policies, better use and development of technology, engineering, preparation/recovery training and education, economic assessment of cost vs benefits for people, structures and resources |
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Mileti's Essential Steps |
build more locally based networks, integrate hazard policies, conduct national hazard assessments, build national databases, comprehensive education and training, international cooperation and work |
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Present disaster mitigation steps |
land use planning, education, active insurance roles, placing more emphasis on government action |
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How has predicting and forecasting improved |
Its science driven, better monitoring and fast, more detailed processing |
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How has warning integration improved |
New technologies enable more timely warning -tone alert radio -recognition of the need for hazard specific message delivery -institutional preparedness limited |
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What are some improvements since Sorensen's paper in 2000 |
WARN - warning alert and response network act CMAS - commercial mobile alert system -presidential alters, AMBER alters |
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What makes an effective warning system |
-Brief -nontechnical language -appropriate text/graphics for affected hazard community and general population -provide most important info first -describe areas affected and time -provide level of uncertainty or probability -brief call-to-action statement -describe where more info can be found |
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How has warning dissemination improved |
-clearer chain of command for communication and response -technological advances -public awareness |
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What do we know about responses to warnings |
-hazard organizations need a clear role and flexibility -physical public response known from sociological studies -public response can be improved through incentives |
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What did Sorensen recommend |
-create a national warning strategy -improve existing warning systems -improve and equalize understanding for range of hazards |
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How does a lahar warning system work |
-uses acoustic-flow monitor stations installed downstream from a volcano -an emergency message is sent every time the vibrations exceed a given threshold for longer than 40 seconds |
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How is "risk of death" determined |
Voluntary vs involuntary Familiar vs unfamiliar Controllable vs uncontrollable Delayed impact vs immediate Little attention vs lots of media coverage Few or sparse deaths vs many |
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What is a volcano |
canoe-shaped hill or mountain formed at vent from which molten rock or gases reach earth's surface and erupt |
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Magma |
molten rock before it erupts |
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Lava |
magma after it reaches Earth's surface |
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Style of eruption depends on what |
volatiles, volume and viscosity (which depends on temperature and composition) |
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What is viscosity |
Resistance to flow - high vis=thick and pasty, higher silica structure -low vis=more fluid |
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What are volatiles |
dissolved gases in magma |
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Describe bubbles and their tendency to explode |
Bubbles can easily escape from low viscosity magma Bubbles remain trapped in high viscosity magma and then explode more violently |
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What are the types of volcanoes and corresponding viscosity types |
Shield volcano - low viscosity Cinder cone - low viscosity Stratovolcano - moderate viscosity Lava dome - high viscosity Caldera - high viscosity |
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How can gravity change in a volcano |
-deformation of the volcano -displacement of mass at the surface -change in density within the edifice |
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Major cause of death for Galeras |
Tephra and ash (volcanic bombs) |
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How does a tsunami form |
from a landslide of a volcano on the ocean/water line |
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Secondary hazards of volcanoes |
lahars tsunamis ground deformation famine climate change |
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Primary hazards of volcanoes |
-tephra and ash -pyroclastic flows -lava flow -poisonous gas |
