Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
called disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies aimed at addressing the sort of dif-
ferential vulnerabilities that academic geographers have used a different terminology
to describe. Despite their different intellectual genealogies, DRR and vulnerability
reduction are really two ways of talking about the same set of issues, and so in this
chapter they will be referred to interchangeably.
But to appreciate how these different terms have developed and the sorts of poli-
cies and practices they inform, it helps to know something about the history of
hazards research.
From Divine Retribution to Scientism
Prior to the 20th century, natural calamities were often regarded as divine retribu-
tion for individual or collective sins. Many examples of pestilence or volcanic activ-
ity were reported in the scriptures of different religious traditions as signs of divine
wrath. The Lisbon earthquake of 1755 was one such example in which the wide-
spread devastation wrought by the earthquake was interpreted as a sign of divine
displeasure resulting in temporary intensifi cation of the inquisition (Alexander,
2002).
Increasingly through 18th and 19th centuries, religious and supernatural explana-
tions for hazards gave way to scientifi c ones. Confi dent in their technological
accomplishments, people in western societies in particular came to believe in the
possibility and even desirability of subjugating nature to scientifi c control. Conse-
quently, hazards came to be viewed as strictly technological problems, which supe-
rior application of engineering and science could solve. In the aftermath of the great
Mississippi fl oods of 1927, for example, the US Army Corps of Engineers embarked
upon massive basin-wide engineering works to prevent fl ooding (Platt, 1986). The
fl ood control works in the Mississippi and earlier river engineering works in the
Rhine River basin (Disse and Engel, 2001) were replicated throughout the 20th
century in many other river basins of the world, e.g., the Indus (Mustafa and
Wescoat, 1997), the Narmada (Gupta, 2001), the Huang He (Yellow River), and
the Sacramento River basins (Golet et al., 2006) among others. Advances in envi-
ronmental science and engineering made it possible to build safer, storm- and
earthquake-resistant structures and provide advanced warnings of tornados, hurri-
canes and droughts to cushion the impact of environmental extremes (Tobin and
Montz, 1997).
Physical geographers have made substantial contributions to understanding the
physical processes involved in environmental hazards. For example, while the con-
tributors to Cello and Malamud (2006) applied fractal mathematics to improve
estimates of the frequency and magnitude of fl oods and other extreme events, others,
such as Litschert (2004), have used GIS techniques to map and model landslide
zones. In the sub-fi elds of geomorphology, hydrology, and climatology physical
geographers have analyzed the physical processes effecting fl oods, droughts, land-
slides and other meteorological hazards (e.g., see Brooks, 2003; Todhunter and
Rundquist, 2004; Dupigny-Giroux et al., 2006; Nicholls, 2007). Similarly, fi re
hazard has been a concern for biogeographers, particularly with an eye towards
balancing the ecological benefi ts of fi re cycles to forest ecosystems and societal needs
(Bowman and Franklin, 2005; Lafon et al., 2005).
By highlighting the ecological effects of engineering interventions, research by
physical geographers is also now informing explicit policy consideration of the
