Natural disasters case examples

Chromatographic analysis of major air components has been demonstrated for providing a powerful tool to be reliable, and even on-site and real-time data. Most of the time, the data is not meant only for the purpose of scientific researches but rather as a means to interpret targeted activities in the environment. Policy makers can thus reach their conclusions based on the interpretations and ask the general public or the manufacturers to comply with. In many cases, abmpt changes of major air components, for example, in groundwater, could be an early alert for natural disasters like volcanic eruptions. To save lives in advance has been an ultimate goal of such studies. More details about these applications are described below and listed in Table 6.4. 

For some systems, a geographical approach may be taken in defining scope. For example, one may need to consider the safety impact of a hospital s servers being destroyed in a fire or natural disaster. It would be sensible in this case to draw boundaries around those systems which are hosted together or have similar dependencies. 

While the Challenger disaster was not a process incident in the strictest sense, the nature of the failure was similar to many piping system failures that typically occur in the process industries. More importantly, organizational failure was a fundamental cause of the incident. This case study serves as a classic example of the type of loss that can occur in a large complex organization if management systems are not effective. 

The formation of dioxolane derivatives from a, p-unsaturated carbonyls is often accompanied by migration of the double bond and the extent of migration depends on the strength of the acid catalyst and the reaction conditions As can be seen from Scheme 2.32, weaker adds (pKa > 3) leave the double bond intact whereas stronger acids cause partial or complete isomerisation,70 The isomerisation of the double bond is not necessarily a disaster indeed, in some cases it can be a useful synthetic tool. For example. Kishi exploited the isomerisation in a concise synthesis of Batrachotoxinin A,71 the initial steps of which are shown in Scheme 2.33. and there are many other examples of a similar nature.72-76... 

Hospitals and other health care facilities may further classify disasters as either internal or external. External disasters are those that do not affect the hospital infrastructure but do tax hospital resources due to numbers of patients or types of injuries (Cans, 2001). For example, a tornado that produced numerous injuries and deaths in a community would be considered an external disaster. Internal disasters cause disruption of normal hospital function due to injuries or deaths of hospital personnel or damage to the physical plant, as with a hospital fire, power failure, or chemical spill (Aghababian, Lewis, Cans, Curley, 1994). Unfortunately, one type of hospital disaster does not necessarily preclude the other, and features of both internal and external disasters may be present if a natural phenomenon affects both the community and the hospital. This was the case with Hurricane Andrew (1992), which caused significant destruction in hospitals, in clinics, and in the surrounding community when it struck south Florida (Sabatino, 1992), and Hurricane Katrina (2005) when it impacted the Gulf Coast, rupturing the levee in New Orleans (Berggren, 2005). 

Ideality is basically a qualitative measure and is used to compare the benefits and harm caused by the introduction of a given system. For example, when a gas pipeline in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, the United States is considered, its Fu can be interpreted as the increased energy independence of the country, the increased chemical production, the additional income for the locals, and so on. On the other hand, Fh may be interpreted as lost valuable agricultural land, harm to the unique views, potential ecological disaster in the case of an explosion and fire, and so on. Such a comparison has purely qualitative nature. However, even in this example, it is entirely possible to assign to all these functions monetary or utility values, and the ideality of a system will be expressed in purely quantitative terms. 

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