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Environmental Hazards Methodologies for Risk Assessment and Management
From the beginning of 21st century, there has been an awareness of risk in the environment along with a growing concern for the continuing potential damage caused by hazards. In order to ensure environmental sustainability, a better understanding of natural disasters and their impacts is essential. It has been recognised that a holistic and integrated approach to environmental hazards needs to be attempted using common methodologies, such as risk analysis, which involves risk management and risk assessment. Indeed, risk management means reducing the threats posed by known hazards, whereas at the same time accepting unmanageable risks and maximizing any related benefits.
eBook
Vulnerability and resilience to natural hazards
\"In recent years there has been growing recognition that disaster risk cannot be reduced by focusing solely on physical hazards without considering factors that influence socio-economic impact. Vulnerability: the susceptibility to the damaging impacts of hazards, and resilience: the ability to recover, have become popular concepts in natural hazard and risk management. This book provides a comprehensive overview of the concepts of vulnerability and resilience and their application to natural hazards research. With contributions from both physical and social scientists it provides an interdisciplinary discussion of the different types of vulnerability and resilience, the links between them, and concludes with the remaining challenges and future directions of the field. Examining global case studies from the US coast to Austria, this is a valuable reference for researchers and graduate students working in natural hazard and risk reduction from both the natural and social sciences\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Introduction to international disaster management
This comprehensive overview of global emergency management provides practitioners and students alike with an understanding of the disaster management profession by using a global perspective, including the different sources of risk and vulnerability, the systems that exist to manage hazard risk, and the many stakeholders involved. This update examines the impact of recent large-scale and catastrophic disaster events on countries and communities, as well as their influence on disaster risk reduction efforts worldwide. It expands coverage of small-island developing states and explores the achievements of the United Nations Hyogo Framework for Action (2005-2015) and the priorities for action in the Post-2015 Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction currently under development.
eBook
Playing against nature
Defending society against natural hazards is a high-stakes game of chance against nature, involving tough decisions. How should a developing nation allocate its budget between building schools for towns without ones or making existing schools earthquake-resistant? Does it make more sense to build levees to protect against floods, or to prevent development in the areas at risk? Would more lives be saved by making hospitals earthquake-resistant, or using the funds for patient care? What should scientists tell the public when – as occurred in L'Aquila, Italy and Mammoth Lakes, California – there is a real but small risk of an upcoming earthquake or volcanic eruption? Recent hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis show that society often handles such choices poorly. Sometimes nature surprises us, when an earthquake, hurricane, or flood is bigger or has greater effects than expected from detailed hazard assessments. In other cases, nature outsmarts us, doing great damage despite expensive mitigation measures or causing us to divert limited resources to mitigate hazards that are overestimated. Much of the problem comes from the fact that formulating effective natural hazard policy involves combining science, economics, and risk analysis to analyze a problem and explore the costs and benefits of different options, in situations where the future is very uncertain. Because mitigation policies are typically chosen without such analysis, the results are often disappointing. This book uses general principles and case studies to explore how we can do better by taking an integrated view of natural hazards issues, rather than treating the relevant geoscience, engineering, economics, and policy formulation separately. Thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter invite readers to confront the complex issues involved.
Readership: Instructors, researchers, practitioners, and students interested in geoscience, engineering, economics, or policy issues relevant to natural hazards. Suitable for upper-level undergraduate or graduate courses.
Additional resources can be found at: http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature [http://www.wiley.com/go/Stein/Playingagainstnature]
eBook
Disaster risk reduction for the built environment
This title provides a multi-faceted introduction to how a wide range of risk reduction options can be mainstreamed into formal and informal construction decision making processes, so that Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) can become part of the 'developmental DNA'. The contents highlight the positive roles that practitioners such as civil and structural engineers, urban planners and designers, and architects (to name just a few) can undertake to ensure that disaster risk is addressed when (re)developing the built environment. The book does not set out prescriptive ('context blind') solutions to complex problems because such solutions can invariably generate new problems. Instead it raises awareness, and in doing so, inspires a broad range of people to consider DRR in their work or everyday practices.
Book
The Disaster Experts
In the wake of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, many are asking what, if anything, can be done to prevent large-scale disasters. How is it that we know more about the hazards of modern American life than ever before, yet the nation faces ever-increasing losses from such events? History shows that disasters are not simply random acts. Where is the logic in creating an elaborate set of fire codes for buildings, and then allowing structures like the Twin Towers-tall, impressive, and risky-to go up as design experiments? Why prepare for terrorist attacks above all else when floods, fires, and earthquakes pose far more consistent threats to American life and prosperity?The Disaster Expertstakes on these questions, offering historical context for understanding who the experts are that influence these decisions, how they became powerful, and why they are only slightly closer today than a decade ago to protecting the public from disasters. Tracing the intertwined development of disaster expertise, public policy, and urbanization over the past century, historian Scott Gabriel Knowles tells the fascinating story of how this diverse collection of professionals-insurance inspectors, engineers, scientists, journalists, public officials, civil defense planners, and emergency managers-emerged as the authorities on risk and disaster and, in the process, shaped modern America.
eBook
Comprehensive typhoon hazard zoning in China based on historical records
The formulation of nationwide goals, strategic plans, and specifically zoned areas for typhoon hazard mitigation and prevention is paramount for addressing the threat in a spatially explicit manner. Utilizing historical rainfall and wind speed data associated with typhoon disasters in the Northwest Pacific and South China Sea from 1949 to 2017, we proposed a comprehensive typhoon hazard zoning delineated based on the assessment of typhoon disaster risks, considering hazard-causing factors, hazard-formative environments, and hazard-bearing bodies through an Analytic Hierarchy Process. High-risk areas were primarily located in the coastal regions of South and Southeast China. Medium-risk areas were situated in the Yangtze River Delta and towns adjacent to Bohai Bay. Low-risk areas were primarily located in the central region of Guangxi, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, the vicinity of Fuzhou, the majority of southern Jiangsu and northern Zhejiang, all of Shanghai, the northern and southern parts of the Shandong Peninsula, the area around Bohai Bay in Tianjin, a minor portion of Hebei, and the three northeastern provinces. Appropriate mitigation measures were proposed to address the threats posed by typhoons in these regions. This information is instrumental in providing reliable support for China in addressing the challenges posed by typhoons.
The risk associated with typhoon hazards was evaluated utilizing the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method.
Contributing factors and the prevailing environment were incorporated into the risk assessment.
The delineation of hazard zones for typhoons across China was conducted through Geographic Information System (GIS) technology.
Zoning for resilient cities was established, with considerations for climate change, to fortify urban areas against the impacts of typhoon hazards.
Journal Article