Natural catastrophes

The term risk assessment is not only used to describe the likelihood of an ad crse response to a chemical or physical agent, but it has also been used to describe the likelihood of any unwanted event. This subject is treated in more detail in tlie next Part. These include risks such as explosions or injuries in tlie workplace natural catastrophes injury or deatli due to various voluntary activities such as skiing, sky diving, flying, and bimgee Jumping diseases deatli due to natural causes and many others. ... 

A first kind of these insurance products are called "catastrophe bonds" and consist in securitizing environmental risks in bonds, which could be sold to high-yield investors. The catastrophe bonds are able to transfer risk to investors that receive coupons that are normally a reference rate plus an appropriate risk premium. By these products, insurance companies limit risk exposure transferring natural catastrophe risk into the capital markets. In this way, with the involvement of the financial markets, their global size offers enormous potential for insurers to diversify risks. 

From the temporal scale of adverse effects we come to a consideration of recovery. Recovery is the rate and extent of return of a population or community to a condition that existed before the introduction of a stressor. Because ecosystems are dynamic and even under natural conditions are constantly changing in response to changes in the physical environment (weather, natural catastrophes, etc.) or other factors, it is unrealistic to expect that a system will remain static at some level or return to exactly the same state that it was before it was disturbed. Thus the attributes of a recovered system must be carefully defined. Examples might include productivity declines in an eutrophic system, re-establishment of a species at a particular density, species recolonization of a damaged habitat, or the restoration of health of diseased organisms. 

A failure that may be of technical origin or stem from human error, either during the operation or during process design. External events, such as weather conditions or natural catastrophe may also be at the origin of a failure. 

If one conducts a literature search on the term risk assessment, a lengthy list of publications on a range of topics will be produced (NAS/NRC, 1983 1994 Paustenbach, 1995), because this term has been used to describe estimates of the likelihood of a number of unwanted events. These include, for example, industrial explosions, workplace injuries, failures of machine parts, natural catastrophes, injury or death as a result of voluntary activities or lifestyle, diseases, and death from natural causes. 

Climate changes manifest themselves both on global and regional scales. Natural catastrophes are one manifestation of these changes. Their intensity and number increased year on year. A serious increase in the number of great natural catastrophes was observed between 1960 and 2005. The frequency of these events more than doubled during this period. Subsequent years were characterized by various... 

The development of constructive methods to predict natural catastrophes requires solution of some problems. 

Adaptation of ecoinformatics methods to the problem of diagnostics and prediction of natural catastrophes in all their variety and at all scales. 

Determination of the statistical characteristics of natural catastrophes in their historical aspect, selecting categories and determining spatiotemporal scales of catastrophic changes in habitats. Analysis of the history of disasters is important for understanding the present dependences of crises both in nature and in society. The statistical characteristics of the dynamics of natural disasters enable formulation of the basis for the mathematical theory of catastrophes and to determine top-priority directions of studies. 

Let the approach of the moment of a natural disaster be characterized by vector. v, that gets into some cluster of multi-dimensional phase space Xy. In other words, converting our verbal portrait to quantitative estimation of this process, we introduce a generalized characteristic I t) of a natural disaster and identify it by calibrated scale E, for which we postulate the presence of relationships of type E] < S2, Ej > S2, or E] = E2. This means that there always exists a value of I(t) = p which determines when a natural catastrophe of a given type can be expected E —> p =/ (S), where / is conversion of the notion of natural disaster into a number. As a result, magnitude 6 = I t) — p determines the expected time interval before the catastrophe occurs. 

Let us search for a satisfactory model to transform our verbal portrait of a natural catastrophe into notions and indicators subject to formalized description and transformation. With this aim in view, we select m elements of subsystems at the lowest level in the N U H system, the interaction between which we determine using the matrix function A = a,/, where ait is an indicator of the level of dependence of the relationships between subsystems i and j. Then, the I(t) parameter can be estimated as the sum ... 

The introduction of characteristic In makes it possible to propose the following scheme of monitoring and predicting natural disasters. Figure 5.4 demonstrates a possible structure for a monitoring system with functions that search, predict, and monitor a natural catastrophe. There are three levels in the system, recorder, decision-maker, and searcher, whose units have the following functions ... 

Realization of this three-layer regime for decision-making about an approaching natural disaster depends on the agreement between the spatiotemporal scales of the monitoring system and the respective characteristics of the natural phenomenon. Most difficult for decision-making are delayed action natural catastrophes which... 

Enz R. (ed.) (2006). Natural catastrophes and man-made disasters High earthquake casualties, new dimension in windstorm losses. Sigma, 2, 1 -40. 

Munich Re (2005b). Topic Geo. Annual Review Natural Catastrophes 2004. Miinchener Ruckversicherungs-Gesellshaft, Munich, Germany, 60 pp. 

Phelan, J.P. (2004). Topics Annual Review of North American Natural Catastrophes 2003. American Re, Princeton, NJ, 48 pp. 

Ruck, M. (2002). Natural Catastrophes 2002 Annual Review. Munich Re Topics, Dresden, Germany, 50 pp. 

Process of estimating the probabilities and magnitude of undesired effects resulting from the release of chemicals, other human actions or natural catastrophes. Volume 2(10). 

High centralization and high concentration of energy and energy flows leads to multiple losses in case of man-caused and natural catastrophes, terror attacks ... 

Given terrorists focus on the news media as a conduit of their psychological warfare, the crisis response community competes with the perpetrators of violence for media and public attention. In this respect, a terrorist event is very different from other disasters—whether an explosion in a chemical or nuclear plant, hurricanes, floods, or other natural catastrophes. 

A degrading weathering environment is one in which rates of physical erosion exceed the rate of chemical weathering and the regolith thickness decreases. Such decreases may result from natural catastrophic events such as landslides in tropical terrains or as a result of human influences such as deforestation, which result in increased rates of... 

It is of utmost importance to simultaneously generate some near-optimal supply networks in the ranked order of the objective-function values along with the optimal one. These near-optimal networks serve as the stand-bys to immediately replace the optimal network in case of interruption arising from man-made catastrophes, e.g., warfare, or natural catastrophes, e.g., wild fires or storms. Such capabilities are totally absent from the MIP-based approaches. 

In several ways, family physicians are particnlarly well suited to respond to terrorism. First, family physicians are widely dispersed, in rural and urban areas, making them accessible for patients wherever manmade or natural catastrophic events might occnr. Second, family physicians provide continuity care, essential for the appropriate care of patients and families with ongoing physical and emotional outcomes from violent events. Third, family physicians provide comprehensive care, and can take care of most of the health problems, including emotional issues, facing victims of terrorism. Fonrth, family physicians understand how to coordinate care for patients, and can refer victims of mass disasters to other appropriate services as necessary. Most importantly, family physicians understand how to provide care in the context of family and community (22). As the events of September/October 2001 demonstrated, terrorism affects entire communities, whether or not individuals directly experience physical outcomes from the attacks. Family physicians, who nnderstand how their patients and families interact with their community, can help identify and treat problems at the community level. Although horrible, past terrorist events illustrate the pivotal role that family physicians play, working in partnership with public health officials to protect and promote the health of families and commnnities. 

Munich Re (2004) Trends of Great Natural Catastrophes Since 1950, TOPICS Geo Annual Review Natural Catastrophes in 2003. (see http ... 

Risk assessments have been performed for a variety of topics, from accidents in the workplace, to lifestyle choices and natural catastrophes. This chapter will focus on evaluating human risk primarily from chemical and radiological exposure. Risk assessment as defined by the National Academy of Science is the use of the factual base to define the health effects of exposure of individuals or populations to hazardous materials and situations. Risk assessment determines if a chemical has a toxic effect, estimates the exposure to this chemical and identifies the adverse effects of the chemical. The combination of the toxicity influenced by the level of exposure estimates what the... 

This feeble arsenal of drugs, essentially devoid of antibiotics, was no match for the catastrophe that followed on the heels of World War I a flu pandemic (sometimes called the Spanish flu ), arguably the greatest natural catastrophe of the 20th century. It ravaged a world weakened by war with millions of soldiers in transit. The flu killed more than 20 million, while medical science had to humbly recommend rest, lots of fluid, and aspirin as the disease ran its course between 1918 and 1920. 

A catastrophic event in general (or catastrophe) is an event that has severe losses, injury, or property damage affects large population of exposures and is caused by natural or handmade events. Examples of catastrophic events include natural disasters (hurricanes, earthquakes, floods) and terrorist attacks. The last 20 years, natural catastrophes have been happening with increasing intensity. 

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