Learner Resource 15

Risk and resilienceExploring the exposure of people to risks and their ability to cope with tectonic hazards changes over time.

You are going to investigate how and why the risks from tectonic hazards have changed over time including:

changes in the frequency and impacts of tectonic hazards over time.

the degree of risk posed by a hazard and the probability of the hazard event occurring (the

disaster risk equation).

Read the information and quotes about events, hazards and disasters

“Natural Hazards are a necessary condition, but you need vulnerability and exposure before you have a disaster”’. Reinhard Mechler

“We cannot eliminate disasters but we can mitigate risk. We can reduce damage and we can save more lives.”Ban Ki-Moon, Former United Nations Secretary General

A natural event in an uninhabited place becomes a hazard in a populated one.

A hazard is natural or human-made event that adversely affects human life, property or activity. A hazard involves people.

“A disaster is an occurrence disrupting the normal conditions of existence and causing a level of suffering that exceeds the capacity of adjustment of the affected community.”(WHO/EHA 2002). There is no universally agreed numerical threshold for designating a hazard as a disaster. A matter of scale, a disaster is a lot bigger than a natural hazard.

Capacity: A combination of all the strengths and resources available within a community, society or organization that can reduce the level of risk, or the effects of a disaster.

Source: WHO/EHA 2002, Disasters & Emergency definitions; http://www.who.int/disasters/repo/7656.pdf

Hazard and risk can be demonstrated in the model below;

a) Explain how the venn diagram in the article can be used to help us to better understand risk: https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2011/3008/fs2011-3008.pdf

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World Disasters Report 2016

http://www.ifrc.org/Global/Documents/Secretariat/201610/WDR%202016-FINAL_web.pdf

Look at the two tables within the report:

(i) Table 6 (p238) – Total number of people reported as being killed by type of phenomenon between 2006 and 2015

(ii) Table 10 (p246) – Total number of people reported as being killed by type of phenomenon, continent and level of development between 2006 and 2015

(a) Describe the biggest killers shown in the tables. The figures show a large number of people is exposed and vulnerable to floods, but death tolls are only moderate compared to other disasters. Suggest reasons for this and explain why the death toll from volcanoes is also very small.

(b) What proportion of people killed by disasters lived in low and medium human development countries during the decade? Use the website below for further information.

https://www.munichre.com/touch/naturalhazards/en/natcatservice/significant-natural-catastrophes/index.html

Are hazardous natural events becoming more common?

(a) Describe the pattern of Geophysical loss events worldwide 1980 – 2015. Is there any trend shown by the data?

https://www.munichre.com/site/touch-naturalhazards/get/documents_E-1137435435/mr/assetpool.shared/Documents/5_Touch/_NatCatService/Focus_analyses/Geophysical_events_worldwide_1980-2015.pdf

Refer to the world map on page 4 and the graph on page 5 as evidence.

Natural hazards, unnatural disasters - Resilience and inequality

(a) Read the information about hazards and disasters

The destruction of Xinjian Primary School

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/25/world/asia/25schools.html?fta=y

The earthquake’s destruction of Xinjian Primary School was swift and complete. Hundreds of children were crushed as the floors collapsed in a deluge of falling bricks and concrete. Days later, as curiosity seekers came with video cameras and as parents came to grieve, the four-story school was no more than rubble.

In contrast, none of the nearby buildings were badly damaged. A separate kindergarten less than 20 feet away survived with barely a crack. An adjacent 10-story hotel stood largely undisturbed.

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And another local primary school, Beijie, catering to children of the elite, was in such good condition that local officials were using it as a refugee centre.

“This is not a natural disaster,” said Ren Yongchang, whose 9-year-old son died inside the destroyed school. His hands were covered in plaster dust as he stood beside the rubble, shouting and weeping as he grabbed the exposed steel rebar of a broken concrete column. “This is not good steel. It doesn’t meet standards. They stole our children.”

DRI – Disaster Risk Index

Read the following Information

The DRI enables the calculation of the average risk of death per country in large- and medium-scale disasters associated with earthquakes, tropical cyclones and floods, based on data from 1980 to 2000. It also enables the identification of a number of socio-economic and environmental variables that are correlated with risk to death and which may point to causal processes of disaster risk. In the DRI, countries are indexed for each hazard type according to their degree of physical exposure, their degree of relative vulnerability and their degree of risk.

The WorldRiskIndex calculates the risk of becoming the victim of a disaster resulting from an extreme natural event, i.e. by multiplying the vulnerability index by the exposure index.

Nature cannot be controlled. Humans can only influence to a limited degree whether, and with what intensity, natural events are to occur. But they can take precautions to help prevent a natural event from becoming a disaster. It is this vulnerability of a society that forms the basis for the WorldRiskIndex, which calculates the disaster risk for 171 countries by multiplying vulnerability with exposure to natural hazards (cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, floods, and sea-level rise).

This risk is especially high wherever natural events hit vulnerable societies. While a low level of vulnerability is not a guaranteed protection against disasters, it can reduce the risk.

Explore the following website, looking particularly at the diagrams in section 3 of the World Risk Index 2016: https://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:5763/WorldRiskReport2016_small.pdf

Building resilience

The best way of dealing with disasters is often before they occur: early warning systems, advance planning, encouraging natural protections like minimizing deforestation or protecting wetlands, building codes, flood control, and more. The 2010 report on “Natural Hazards, UnNatural Disasters: The Economics of Effective Prevention,” from the World Bank gives a very comprehensive overview

https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/gfdrr.org/files/nhud/files/NHUD-Report_Full.pdf

Answer the following review question:

‘Society, rather than nature, decides who is more likely to be exposed to dangerous geophysical agents’ Hewitt (1997) New York Times. To what extent do you agree with these views?

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