Latest Natural hazard Stories
Natural hazards – like earthquakes and landslides – put people and places at risk every day, but satellites are able to help improve safety and mitigate these risks. International experts will meet next month to discuss how space-based technology can help us prepare for and respond to disasters. Organized by ESA in association with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), the International Forum on Satellite Earth Observation for Geohazard Risk Management will be held on 21–23 May...
SANTA ANA, Calif., Dec. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, today released its first ever Natural Hazard Risk Summary and Analysis detailing the record-breaking natural disasters that struck the United States in 2011. The report provides an analysis of significant hurricane, wildfire, tornado, flood and earthquake events, as well as a summary of potential risk in 2012 and the implications...
As large parts of the nation recover from nature's one-two punch—an earthquake followed by Hurricane Irene—building researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warn that a double whammy of seismic and wind hazards can increase the risk of structural damage to as much as twice the level implied in building codes. This is because current codes consider natural hazards individually, explains NIST's Dat Duthinh, a research structural engineer. So, if...
Researchers from the University of Barcelona (UB) have, for the first time, analyzed all the articles published in the La Vanguardia newspaper between 1982 and 2007 linked to natural hazards, climate change and sustainable development. Over 25 years the press devoted more headlines to forest fires and droughts, even though floods are much more frequent and cause more damage."If the press focus more on forest fires and droughts, then people also become more aware of these events, to such...
Amid all the commentary focused on the historic tragedy in Haiti, a tough but important fact has gone virtually unmentioned, according to a nationally recognized expert on disasters at the University of Colorado at Boulder."What is missing from the tragedy of disaster, and our response to it, is the recognition that disasters are preventable, that it is within the power of societies and communities to prevent or at least minimize the devastation disasters cause," said Kathleen...
Scientists using nationwide data collected since 1970 have produced a map depicting natural hazard mortality across the United States. Susan Cutter and Kevin Borden from the University of South Carolina said their map presents a county-level representation of the likelihood of dying as the result of natural events such as floods, earthquakes or extreme weather. This work will enable research and emergency management practitioners to examine hazard deaths through a geographic lens, the...
By Emma BathaBONN (Reuters) - The United Nations is launching a campaign to "disaster proof" schools to reduce the numbers of children crushed to death in earthquakes or washed away in floods, the head of its risk reduction agency said on Wednesday.Some 18,000 children died in the Pakistan quake in October when their schools collapsed on top of them, roughly a quarter of the total death toll.Reinforcing the buildings would have cost as little as a dollar a child, one aid agency said...
By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO (Reuters) - Governments too often ignore risks of natural disasters like hurricanes and earthquakes and could save lives and billions of dollars with better planning, an international study said on Thursday. Over the past century, the number of recorded natural disasters surged to 2,800 per decade from 100, according to the study for the International Council for Science, a non-government organization of experts from around the world....
