Earth: A Fragile System Notes

$-disaster:$ substantial event causing physical damage, injury or loss of life, and/or a drastic change to the environment (environmental loss)
natural disasters are preventable with proper mitigation * technological, political, and social advances make this easier * increasing human population and climate change make this harder

globally, natural disasters are increasing in terms of * death (fatalities) * destruction (economic losses)
generally, there are high fatalities in developing countries and high costs in developed countries

many hazards are not increasing in frequency or severity (earthquakes, volcanoes, etc.) * population growth has put more people and more structures in hazardous settings because they’re more vulnerable
there is evidence that weather/climate-related hazards are getting more severe and occurring more frequently

present: * with warning of disasters, people can be evacuated * infrastructure destroyed by natural disasters
future: * with greater population, infrastructure becomes even more sensitive/important * people are less likely to be evacuated successfully * death tolls are likely to increase

$vulnerability:$ the severity of problems that a community (people, property, infrastructure, resources, environment) will suffer if exposed to a particular natural hazard

$disaster scale:$ a logarithmic scale that uses common, standardized terms and measurements * key to communicating disaster information * increases by powers of 10 * each order of magnitude = 1 power of 10
”order of magnitude”= powers of 10 * 10^0=1 * 10^1=10 * 10^2=100 * “magnitude 3” means 10^3 or 1000x higher/stronger/bigger than magnitude 0
disasters happen at many magnitudes * higher magnitude events occur less and lower magnitude events occur more

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