Natural hazards

ISSUES

Natural hazards

The constant rise in the number of victims that has been noted over the last two decades can essentially be explained not by an increase in the number of unpredictable occurrences, but rather by the increasing vulnerability of humankind to such events. This is due to anarchic development in high-risk zones, to the concentration of population on the coast and to the shortage of information systems. Natural disasters are also amplified by the imbalances caused by man-made changes (soil cover) and by climatic variability, to the point where it is difficult to distinguish between what is natural and what is linked to human activity. Some hazards such as volcanic eruptions have been studied for a long time now and have benefited from technological developments in surveillance tools which make them relatively easy to forecast. Others still resist such predictions, such as earthquakes or tsunamis, which are triggered by underwater earthquak...

NEWS

Sorry, most of the news are only available in French language for the moment.

FRANCE - LA ROCHE-SUR-YON - Après le passage de la tempête Xynthia qui a fait 53 morts, dont 41 en Vendée et en...

UGANDA - Uganda plans to resettle at least 500,000 people living in mountainous areas over fears that last week's deadly...

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - WASHINGTON - Des Américains veulent poursuivre des compagnies pétrolières et chimiques qu'ils accusent d'avoir accéléré...

Univers GoodPlanet par Netvibes

DEBATES

From Risk to resilience – Helping communities cope with crisis

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies

International media tend to portray disaster-affected communities as helpless - saved only by outside aid. Yet beyond the...

Quake, flood, fire. Will be ready ?

THE people of Kobe know what disaster feels like. The...

The Word : Act of God

WHO do you blame when a giant wave knocks down your home?...

FOCUS

Natural disaters

Two major disasters have put climate change at the centre of public debate - the 2003 European heat wave and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

VIDEOS

23/12/2009	Christopher Field tells us about how ecosystems can contribute to a...	16/12/2009	Liu Shaw Chen, director of a research centre on climate change tells us...
24/09/2009	reportage d'ITN News sur la tempête de sable qui a frappé Sydney...	17/07/2009	Au Bangladesh, l’UNDP (programme des Nations Unis pour le développement)...

GREEN TIPS

Vegetalized barriers against the tsunami

From 2006 to 2007, the government of Tamil Nadu, a state at India’s land’s end (in the south-east) and the...

INDICATORS

CHECK OUT THE STATE OF THE WORLD ON OUR 3D GLOBE