Hazard – Potential threat to human life or property
Natural Hazards – Caused by natural processes e.g. lava flow from volcanic eruption
Hydro-meteorological Hazards – Caused by climatic processes (droughts, floods, tropical cyclones and storms
Geophysical Hazards – Caused by land processes (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes)
Disaster – When a hazard seriously affects humans
Risk – Likelihood that humans will be seriously affected by a hazard
Vulnerability – How susceptible a population is to the damage caused by a hazard.
Risk increases if: * Frequency or severity of hazards increase * People vulnerability increase * Capacity to cope decreases
(Capacity to cope is the ability to deal with the consequences of a hazard) e.g. people in remote areas are further from help in central areas, so have lower capacity to cope)
* Global Warming – greatest global hazard * Recent increase in average global temp – climate change * Causes other types of climate change * Context hazard – global in scale (affects all parts of environment) – potential to trigger other hazards or make them worse * Chronic Hazard (Long term) * People who aren’t causing the problem are mostly affected * Difficult to find solutions
* Hydro-meteorological hazards becoming more frequent * Increasing hydro-meteorological hazards due to global warming * Number of disasters increasing due to:
Human Factors * Rapid population growth and urbanisation – increases number of vulnerable people, especially in poor countries * Increasing world poverty – poor people more vulnerable to hazards * Exploitation of resources – deforestation and loss of wetlands –
