Hazards: A level Geography

Concept of Hazard in Geographical Context

Responding to Hazards

Individuals and Governments might respond to a hazard to try to reduce their vulnerability, or to reduce its impacts.

The natural human response to a hazard is to reduce risk to life and equity. At a local level this involves saving possessions and safeguarding property; globally this means coordinating rescue and humanitarian aid. The intensity and magnitude of the event as well as the original state of the infrastructure (and how badly it has been damaged) affects the speed of the international response.

People respond to natural hazards and the threats that they can pose by seeking ways to reduce the risk. Responses can come from individuals, the local community with people working together, and from national governments and international agencies.

Community resilience is the sustained ability of a community to utilise available resources to respond to, withstand and recover form the effects of natural hazards. Communities that are resilient are able to minimise the effects of a hazard, making the return to normal life as effortless as possible.

The Park Response Model

The park model shows the different phases of response to a hazard.

The Disaster/Response Curve shows that hazard events can have varying impacts over time, in 1991 Park devised his impact/response model.

The Park model shows how responses progress during a disaster, which may help planners predict what resources will be needed at each stage. The model can also help planners to prepare for future hazard events. For example, the reconstruction phase of the model shows that conditions can be improved after a disaster, (eg. by designing hazard resistant buildings or installing warning systems),w chih will help to mitigate the impacts of future hazard events.

Before the disaster strikes, where the quality of life is normal for the area. Here people try their best to prevent such events and prepare in case they should happen.

(Disruption)- During and directly after the hazard event occurs, there is destruction of property, loss of life etc. Quality of life suddenly drops with possible people taking immediate action to preserve life and, if possible, the built environment.

Relief, where medical attention, rescue services and overall care are delivered. This can last from a few hours to several days if the event has been very damaging. From this point the quality of life of the people of the area starts to slowly increase.

Rehabilitation, Once the immediate impact is under control, people start to resolve long-term problems. Where people try to return the state of things to normal by providing food, water and shelter for those most affected. This period can last anything from a few days to weeks.

Reconstruction, where the infrastructure and property are reconstructed and crops regrown. At this time people people use the experience of the event to try to learn how to better respond to the next one.

A key feature of the modern approach to hazard response, is that hazards are best combated by efficient management. Modern management techniques, with their gathering of information, careful analysis and deliberate planning, aim to make the most efficient use of the money available to confront natural hazards. A process known as integrated risk management is often used which incorporates identification of the hazard, analysis of the risks, establishing priorities, treating the risk and implementing a risk reduction plan, developing public awareness and a communication strategy, and monitoring and reviewing the whole process. The governments of many countries use such schemes.

People and organisations, therefore, try to manage natural hazards in the following ways:

Prediction: It may be possible to give warnings that will enable action to be taken. The key to this is improved monitoring in order to give predictions which means that warnings can be issued. The National Hurricane Centre in Florida is a good example of an agency demonstrating how prediction can depend on monitoring, through the use of information from satellites and land-, sea- and air-based recordings.

Prevention: For natural hazards, this is probably unrealistic although there have been ideas and even schemes such as seeding clouds in potential tropical storms in order to cause more precipitation, which in theory would result in a weakening of the system as it approaches land.

Protection: The aim is to protect people, their possessions and the built environment from the impact of the event. This usually involves modifications to the built environment such as improved sea walls and earthquake-proof buildings. One way in which governments can act, and people react, is to try and change attitudes and behaviours to natural hazards which will reduce people's vulnerability. Community preparedness ( or risk sharing) involves prearranged measures that aim to reduce the loss of life and property damage through public education and awareness programmes, evacuation procedures and provision of emergency medical and food supplies and shelters. There can also be attempts to modify losses through insurance (richer areas) and international air (in poorer regions).

All attempts at management must be evaluated in terms of their success. Successful schemes include the use of dynamite to divert lava flows on Mt Etna and pouring sea water on lava flows in Iceland. On the other hand, the Japanese felt that they were well prepared for earthquakes and yet in 1995 the city of Kobe suffered the Great Hanshin earthquake, which destroyed over 100,000 buildings (with three times that number damaged) and a death toll of over 6,000 with 35,000 injuries.

The Risk/Hazard Management Cycle:

All this can be put together as the disaster/risk management. Illustrating the ongoing process by which governments, businesses and society plan for and reduce the impact of disaster, react during and immediately following an event, and take steps to recover after an event has occurred.

There are four stages that authorities go through in managing hazards:

Mitigation- This aims to minimise the impacts of future disaster. For example, building flood defences or adding fire-resistant roofs to buildings in areas prone to volcanic eruption. Mitigation can happen before a hazard occurs or afterwards, when the area is recovering

Preparedness- This is about planning how to respond to a hazard, eg. making sure there are warning systems in place or educating people about how to evacuate safely if there is a cyclone.

Response- This is how people react when a disaster occurs, eg. emergency services rescuing people who have been trapped or evacuating people form the danger zone.

Recovery- This is about getting the affected area back to normal, eg, repairing or rebuilding houses and restoring services such as medical care and electricity.

It's a cycle because hazard events keep happening, so effort to prepare for them or mitigate their effects are ongoing.