Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Indian Ocean tsunami, which killed around 230,000 people, and
Hurricane Katrina, which in 2005 killed 1,836 people and left
80% of New Orleans under water, testify.
The roles of physical and human geographers in studying natural
hazards are different but complementary. Physical geographers
need to understand, monitor, and predict the actual physical
event; human geographers need to understand how the dangers
of natural hazards are perceived and whether they infl uence
decision-making and behaviour. Studies of post-tsunami Sri
Lanka show how fear of recurrence has become a political tool
to implement a range of security measures, including a buffer
zone that has caused discontent among those affected by its
location. There is a need to set up preventive measures and
mitigating policies, including zoning regulations, which require
explicit recognition of the spatial properties of the hazard, but
consultation and collaboration with local residents is crucial.
The record of applied geography's intervention has not been
uniformly successful. The physical events, such as a volcanic
eruption or earthquake, can be monitored but prediction is by
no means a precise science, the margins of error are wide. The
experience of human behaviour is that whatever advice is given,
people will build on fl ood plains and return to settlements close
to volcanoes. The lack of imperatives in the human response may
in part be due to the imprecision with which the physical events
can be predicted, but it also stems from cultural norms, political
contexts, and patterns of behaviour that need to be addressed.
Physical and human geographers clearly need to be involved
together in hazard research, but there is some evidence that
physical geographers work more comfortably with geophysicists
and engineers, who speak the same language of science. There
is also evidence that even when the science of the event is
understood, a natural disaster will still occur where that evidence
has not been successfully communicated. In the Nevada del Ruiz
volcanic eruption of 1958, there was an almost complete hazard
Search WWH ::




Custom Search