EOSC 114 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Natural Hazard
12 Sep 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Disaster: substantial event causing: physical damage, injury or loss of life, a drastic change to environment. Humans and disasters: high fatalities in developing countries, high costs in developed countries. Death (fatalities) and destruction (economic losses) from natural disasters increasing because of population growth. But hazards themselves are not increasing in frequency or severity. Hazard any event or situation that could cause human (deaths, injuries) or economic harm (property, prosperity) Vulnerability a weakness that could be affected by a disaster. (i. e. how badly it could be affected). The severity of problems that a community (people, property, infrastructure, resources, environment) will suffer if exposed to a particular natural hazard. Risk probability that any given hazardous event might occur (chance of potential loss). * smaller the hazard/vulnerability, the smaller the risk. When judging risk, take into the account of the statistics (in reality, which one is more likely?)
