Natural Hazards

• A natural hazard is a natural event that threatens people or has the potential to cause damage, destruction and death
• Hazards posed by living things (e.g. forest fires) are biological hazards
• Hazards to humans created in the atmosphere (such as tropical storms, droughts and tornadoes) are atmospheric hazards
• Hazards originating on or near the Earth’s surface (such as landslides, flooding and mudflows ) are considered geomorphological hazards
• Hazard risk is the probability or chance that a natural hazard may take place
• Natural events that occur away from humans and properties are not considered natural hazards
• Factors that increase hazard risks

  • Urbanisation - More densely populated areas
  • Development - LICs have less hazard proof infrastructure
  • Climate Change - Tropical storms are affected by global warming
  • Geographic location - Tectonic boundary are more at risk
• Protection -actions taken before a hazard strikes to reduce its impact, such as educating people or improving building design
• Planning – actions taken to enable communities to respond to, and recover from, natural disasters, through emergency evacuation plans and warning systems.
• Prediction – attempts to forecast when and where a hazard will strike. This can be done to some extent for volcanic eruptions, but less reliably for earthquakes
• Monitoring – recording physical changes, such as earthquake tremors around a volcano, to help forecast when and where a natural hazard might strike.
• Extreme weather is weather that is significantly different from the normal pattern