Holly Webster

1-15-12

Natural Hazards

I'd like to begin with my favorite quote from an article called Hazard In The Environment, We
have met the enemy and it is us attributed to Walter Kelly. I have to agree with this quote because I
believe that the Human race does have an impact on the intensity of these natural hazards. In the
introduction, he addresses human concern associated with death and destruction of these hazards and
other lifestyle risks like smoking cigarettes, together with other global scale dangers. The bottom
line is that economic development and environmental hazards are rooted in the same ongoing process
of change. The more people there are the better chance of them being exposed to hazard. Also, there is
a higher per capita level of human consumption that impose heavy burdens on natural assets, like land,
forests, water, and environmental quality overall. Next, he explains how our understanding of these
hazards has changed through history. It starts out with the evolution of environmental hazard
paradigms. First, there was the engineering paradigm originating with the first river dams to attempt to
defend buildings from earthquakes. They also began scientific weather forecasting. Second, there was
the behavioural paradigm that concentrated on the more developed countries. They worked on flood
control and the negative effects of deforestation. It was more practical and dominant partly because it
was operated mostly by the armed forces. Next was the development paradigm, originated by social
scientists. This view is based on the theory that disasters come from under development from political
dependency and unequal trading between rich and poor nations. Lastly, the complexity paradigm
figures out how disaster impacts can be reduced in a sustainable way, especially for the poor.

In Dimensions of Disaster, it covers statistics and audits disaster. There are 4 types of disaster

impact. There are direct gains/losses and indirect gains/losses. These impacts have tangible and
intangible effects as well. In the CRED database, it states that 22.3 million people were killed by
natural disasters between 1900 and 2006. On this chart it is clear that drought has killed the most
people with an 52.5 percentage overall! Flood coming in second with 31 percent. In disaster trends, it
shows more people die in low human development areas and more estimated damage occurs in high
human development areas. It also shows that deaths were over 6,000 in 1900 and only a few hundred
from 1990-1995. Climate change will create more inequality widening the gap between the rich &
poor because it will impact the ecosystems & effect countries with few spare resources. Technical
innovation can be good and bad for society. It's great for better forecasting and safer construction but it
can cause disaster if technology fails.

In Complexity in Hazard and Disaster, it uses the complexity theory originated in theoretical areas
of math & physics in the late 70's. It has evolved from an equation-based theory into a social science
and more important in understanding the way human systems operate. Chaos theory developed in
response to a need to understand how apparently simple systems could develop very complex styles of
behavior. In the DNA model of complexity in natural disaster causation it views it the same way as
DNA justifies life. Disasters don't come from one strand or the other, but from the complex
interactions between them. The complexity and disaster reduction approach is sometimes called
hopeless because the complexity in the interactions that cause the disaster are unpreventable.
Although, some believe that knowledge of the inherent complexity within systems provides an insight
into their operation and management. The complexity model for example, says that disasters often
happen because of a catastrophic chain of events. Breaking this chain would prevent and or reduce, the
scale of the developing disaster.