Natural Hazards and Preparedness

About this topic

Natural hazards include earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis, floods, droughts, wildfires, storms and landslides. A hazard becomes a disaster when it affects vulnerable people. Risk depends on hazard, exposure and vulnerability, and is generally higher in poorer regions.

Preparedness includes monitoring and early warning systems, building codes, evacuation plans, emergency kits and education. Land-use planning avoids flood plains. Climate change is increasing the frequency of some hazards, making resilience more important.

Think about an earthquake of the same size hitting two places. In 2010, a magnitude 7.0 quake in Haiti killed over 100,000 people, while a magnitude 8.8 quake in Chile the same year killed several hundred, mostly because of building standards, preparation and response. This shows that disaster is not just the natural event but the human risk. Risk can be thought of as hazard times exposure times vulnerability, divided by capacity to cope.

Preparedness actions are practical: know your local hazards, make a family plan and grab bag with water, food, torch, radio and medicines, and learn first aid. Tsunami warning buoys and sirens, flood barriers, fire breaks and cyclone shelters save lives, and reliable warnings are only useful if people know how to react, so drills matter. Mitigation (reducing the hazard effect) differs from adaptation and from response. A common misconception is that natural disasters are purely natural; poverty, poor planning and building on flood plains make them worse. Another is that hazards can be prevented; we cannot stop an earthquake but can lessen the damage.