Exploring Why Some Hazards Are Easier to Predict Than Others

Exploring Why Some Hazards Are Easier to Predict Than Others

For my essay I will looking at different case studies and reasons why

it appears that some hazards are easier to predict then others. There

were 497 reported natural hazards that took a significant human toll -

between 1974 and 1978. The last five years have seen 1,897 of them, a

nearly three fold increase. Between 1974 and 1978, 195 million people

were killed by such disasters or needed emergency aid; there were 1.5

billion such victims in the past five years.

Natural hazards are happening more often, and having an ever more

dramatic impact on the world in terms of both their human and economic

costs.

While the number of lives lost has declined in the past 20 years -

800,000 people died from natural disasters in the 1990s, compared with

2 million in the 1970s - the number of people affected has risen. Over

the past decade, the total affected by natural hazards has tripled to

2 billion.

According to wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn a hazard is: - a source

of danger; a possibility of incurring loss or misfortune.

Predict is defined as:-The skill of explaining new events based on

observations or information. According to: -

www.dpi.state.wi.us/standards/sciglos.html

When looking at the different types of hazards to injure or kill

people, or costing the most economic price, we consider such hazards

as tsunamis and earthquakes. Recently, In December’s tsunami in the

Indian Ocean, an estimated 250,000-300,000 people were killed or are

still missing, while millions of lives have been upturned, socially

and economically, by its impact. A main reason for the huge...

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...s not high.

Hazards in LEDC countries such as the flooding in Bangladesh although

can be predicted quite well due to seasonal rainfall and a build up of

pressure can not be researched fully due to Bangladeshis poor economic

status. As no money is available to them for research and prediction,

none can be obtained, meaning that the problem will constantly

persist.

In conclusion I would say that, yes some hazards are easier to predict

then others, due to substantial research being done in some areas,

such as hurricanes. Other hazards such as volcanoes can be seen prior

to the event, so can also easily be predicted that an eruption will be

eminent. As yet prediction is not good enough to predict some

hazards such as earthquakes, making them hard to predict, perhaps only

giving moments warning, if any at all.