• Earthquake events since 1980 have fluctuated.
• 1997 and 2000 had the highest earthquake and overall tectonic events, both going
over 100 collectively.
• Volcanic Activity and Tsunamis have also fluctuated over the 35 years, but both are
significantly less numerous than Earthquakes (Volcanoes approx. 10x less frequent).
• Mass Movement events have only seemingly occurred since 2007 and appear to be
increasing steadily.
Factors affecting disaster significance
- Poor infrastructure
(transport) and
services (healthcare)
- Long term damage
to crops, significant
buildings.
- Slow onset (longer
duration) vs Rapid
onset (short
duration) events
2
, - Poverty and lack of ‘tertiary’ employment
- Uneven standards of housing and unequal wealth (including aid)
- Due to the growth of smartphones and social media, a lot of event reporting in the
media is instant.
- Social media is largely un-filtered, and the source must always be questioned.
- Rapid onset events like geophysical tectonic disasters are more sensational and sell
more papers, leading to uneven media coverage towards them. This might lead people
to think these events are more frequent, but data trends disagree, and hydro-
meteorological events are far more commonplace due to Climate Change.
But…
- As population and urbanisation increases globally, more people are being affected as a
total figure because it remains proportional.
- This is also true of damage costs as more places develop economically through
globalization
- Tectonic events are becoming a global issue with global impacts
Lesson 2 - Global impacts of tectonic hazards
Tectonic hazards can have global and regional impacts in a number of ways.
1. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and caused global dimming
2. Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland erupted in 2010 and caused Flight path disruption and
affected Tourism and Business
3. Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan 2011 caused a change in global Nuclear
energy policy
4. Indian Ocean tsunami 2004 caused deaths in multiple nations due to tourist visitors
Lesson 3 – Multiple Hazard Zones
- Multiple hazard zones are places where two or more natural hazards occur, and in some
cases can interact to produce complex disasters and increase risk
- They are often areas which have greater vulnerability, and are therefore known as
disaster hotspots
- These locations are often:
1. Tectonically active (Volcanoes and earthquakes)
2. Have unstable mountains (landslides)
3. On major storm tracks (storms in mid-latitudes or tropical cyclones near the
equator)
4. Can suffer from global climate perturbations (El Nino/La Nina)
3
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