ERTH 2415 Lecture Notes - Natural Disaster, 6 Years, Thorium
Document Summary
Reading assignments: don"t try to do all the readings at once. Contents: what is a natural disaster, natural hazards, sources of energy fuelling natural disasters, global trends, canadian trends, risk and mitigation. Vancouver would be a natural disaster, but a large earthquake on an uninhabited island would not be. Vulnerability: likelihood that a community will suffer, both in terms of fatalities and physical damage, when exposed to hazards in the environment. In an example of aerial power lines there would be a lot of damage due to strong winds, ice rain, and cold weather causing many power outages and turning into a natural disaster. But if we burry the power lines we become resiliant: natural hazards are inevitable but natural disasters are not. Frequency: number of similar events per unit time: example, on average, 4 former tropical cyclones affect atlantic canada ever year.