Disaster Prevention And Reduction Strategy

The San Andreas fault line has caused constant development nightmares for large urban areas such as San Francisco as well as the other cities built on top of it. Fault lines are one of the side effects of the earth’s tectonic plates shifting that can result in devastating earthquakes. Some of the most devastating earthquakes in our modern era have occurred along the San Andreas fault line due to a dense population. The most notable and destructive earthquake on the San Andreas fault line occurred in San Francisco in 1906. The reason this earthquake was so deadly was because of its magnitude and the city’s poor planning. This earthquake was a wakeup call for San Francisco and force the city to revolutionize its knowledge on earthquakes and how to protect their city. Today San Francisco is one of the most well prepared cities for an earthquake and has made great discoveries in earthquake safety measures. The 1906 earthquake in San Francisco has drastically changed how the city has developed its zoning and building code policies, and its earthquake research.

Seismologists have recorded that most Oklahoma earthquakes generally strike within the 2.5 – 3.0 magnitude on average. While some have been recorded to spike up much higher which could potentially cause structural damage to homes. Earthquakes of large magnitude have the potential to create large-scale destruction to homes, which do not meet building code requirements for earthquakes of this magnitude. “It has implications for calculated risks of seismic hazard, and it will have an economic impact on the state if people have to start building to more stringent design standards (Brus).”

A ‘hazard’ can be defined as a geophysical process operating within the lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere or biosphere which could potentially lead to the loss of human life or property. However, an earthquake only becomes hazardous and therefore needs management if it occurs within close proximity to a vulnerable population. To some extent, any human settlement around the world situated close to or on top of an area of seismic activity is vulnerable. However, not all nations suffer equal devastation.

The natural environment is, of course, not “getting its revenge”. Geophysical, meteorological, and hydrologic processes are unfolding as they have for millennia, beginning long before humans occupied the earth and continuing to the present. Given the eons-long perspective of the natural environment, it would be very difficult to identify meaningful changes in event frequency for the short time period in which scientific records are available on geological, meteorological, and hydrological phenomena. Event frequency, from an emergency management perspective, is not really the issue. It is certainly true that, over the years, more people have been affected by natural disasters and losses are becoming progressively greater. The significant feature driving these observations, however, is the extent of human encroachment into hazard prone areas. With increasing population density and changing land use patterns, more people are exposed to natural hazards and consequently our accumulated human and economic losses are increasing. Much of this exposure is a matter of choice. Sometimes people choose hazardous places, building houses on picturesque cliffs, on mountain slopes, in floodplains, near beautiful volcanoes, or along seismic faults. Sometimes people choose hazardous building materials that fail under extreme environmental stresses—for example, unreinforced masonry construction in seismically active areas. Some exposure results from constrained choices; the cheap land or

Earthquake early warning systems alert devices and people when shaking waves generated by an earthquake are expected to arrive at their location. The seconds to minutes of advance warning allow people and systems to take actions to protect life and property from disastrous shaking. Devices such as isolation systems and dampers are designed to reduce vibrations of structures being effected in an earthquake and are added to the design of some modern buildings mainly in Japan. Advanced radar and infrared cameras take a series of images collecting data to identify signs of earthquakes. Advanced Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar shows fault movements over a period of years. Modems and Data Processing centres receive data collected by satellites to analyse the trends recognised in the electromagnetic emissions, radar pictures, infrared readings and elf

A hazard can best be defined as a 'situation that poses a level of threat to life, health, property or the environment.' The overall impact of earthquakes as a natural hazard varies greatly from one place and timeframe to another. As do the types of hazards, which are categorised into primary and secondary. Primary hazards are created by the direct seismic energy of an earthquake; this could include liquefaction, slope failure and tsunamis. These primary hazards can in turn trigger secondary hazards such as floods, fires, disease and destabilisation of infrastructure. A number of factors play a part in determining the severity

Earthquake Hazards occur when there are adverse effects on human activities. This can include surface faulting, ground shaking and liquefaction. In this essay I will be discussing the factors that affect earthquakes, whether human such as population density, urbanisation and earthquake mitigation or physical such as liquefaction, magnitude, landslides and proximity to the focus.

Earthquakes pose a significant risk in many regions of the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), more particularly along the tectonically active East African Rift System (EARS). Further away from this rift system, the remainder of SSA is largely considered a stable intra-plate region characterized by a relatively low rate of seismicity. Nonetheless, several large earthquakes have been reported in historical times. While most of earthquakes in Sub-Saharan Africa occur along the EARS (inter-plate seismicity), it must be noted that a damaging earthquake can occur anywhere, especially as cities grow and many buildings are constructed without taking potential ground shaking into account. Even moderate-sized events can prove disastrous should it occur near

Disasters, whether natural or manmade, can happen anytime and anywhere, without warning. An earthquake, hurricane, tornado, fire, or hazardous material spill or even an act of terrorism can happen

Thesis statement: In the speech, I will continue to improve the earthquake’s knowledge of my audience by analyzing cases; introduce the significant idea of earthquake prediction; deeply develop rescue methods.

For this assignment, we are to examine earthquake activity around the world. Specifically, we are to examine the United States Geological Survey (USGS) earthquake website searching for earthquakes that have occurred around the world with a magnitude greater than two point five in the last seven days. Responses to the questions of the lab, based on the information obtained from the USGS website at 10:23 AM on Friday, January 3, 2014, are the basis of this paper.

Due to diverse geo-climatic conditions prevalent in different parts of the globe, different types of natural disasters like floods, droughts, earthquakes, cyclones, landslides, and volcanoes etc may strike according to the vulnerability of the area.

While natural disasters such as floods, drought and hurricanes are commonly thought to occur due to environmental forces such as weather, climate and tectonic movements; a deeper investigation into the ‘disaster’ displays other contributing forces. Human factors have a large, if not equal, contribution to the occurrance and outcome of such disasters (Pelling, 2001). As Pelling (2001) argues, there is both a physical and human dimension to ‘natural disasters’. The extent to which the natural occurrence of a physical process, such as a flood or earthquake, impacts on society is constructed by that society, creating a ‘disaster’ as measured by a

A disaster is an occurrence of threat that is widespread in nature with potential to course loss of life, property or severe injury. A disaster may result from man-made or natural causes. A man-made disaster may be intentional or as a result of an accident; Example of man-made disaster include sabotage, hostile paramilitary or military action, enemy attack, accidental explosions or exposure from hazardous materials. Natural causes of disaster will include, but is not limited to, drought, earthquake, floods and Wild fires ADDIN EN.CITE Green2004336(Green & Kolesar, 2004)33633617Green, Linda V.Kolesar, Peter J.Improving Emergency Responsiveness with Management ScienceManagement

Marmara Region of Istanbul has a history of catastrophic earthquakes such as the ones that struck on 17 August 1999 (Mw=7.4) and12 November 1999 (Mw=7.2). This led to the introduction of Istanbul Earthquake Rapid Response and Early Warning System (IERREWS) as a preventive measure for future earthquakes occurrences. This system consists of a dense network of 100 strong motion recorders located in the metropolitan area of Istanbul, 10 near the Great Marmara Fault and 40 more located at important structures (Mert et al 2004). The early warning system of the (IERREWS) is based on exceeding of predetermined thresholds values for the peak ground acceleration (PGA) and Cumulative Absolute Velocity (CAV) it has three alarm levels. If the value of CAV exceeds the threshold value it is considered a vote and within a specified time interval if the threshold value is exceeded in 2 or 3 stations the first alarm is declared. The original CAV has been modified to Bracketed CAV (BCAV) which is a summation of the maximum acceleration value exceeding a threshold value within a specific time domain generally at a one second interval. A recently modified version of the BCAV called the Windowed Bracketed CAV (BCAV-W) has been suggested which integrates the maximum acceleration values for a window length of 8 seconds. For the bracketed CAV window the threshold values suggested for the three alarm levels are 0.20, 0.40 and 0.70 m/s (Alcik et al 2009).