Natural hazard

To be or not to be a ‘natural’ disaster: that is the question

Giulia Roder August 17, 2020

City ruins of an earthquake (unknown location). Source: Pixabay 2016.

The story of science is replete with theories that only become accepted by the scientific community after long and protracted uphill battles, said Howard Wolinsky in his commentary in Science and Society in 2008. Sometimes they are rejected, ridiculed, or they take time to be validated, digested, and likely accepted. However, in my opinion, the scientific discussion over new hypotheses is at the h ...[Read More]

Faults and earthquakes as friends and not foes

Afroz Shah August 3, 2020

Figure 1: The earthquakes with magnitude > 7 with a focal depth of 50 km are plotted on the satellite image to show the global distribution of earthquakes, and their relationship with the plate boundaries. The figure is created using the open-source application Natural Hazards Viewer of NOAA (2020), and data are obtained on 26th June 2020.

The earthquakes’ occurrence on the planet Earth is largely considered synonymous with disasters and people generally perceive geological faults as a threat to life and belongings. However, there are exceptions since a small community of earthquake researchers relate the occurrence of earthquakes with the lithospheric plate interactions where movement on faults causes earthquakes. Therefore, ...[Read More]

In between Natural Hazards and Heritage, interview to Maria Bostenaru

Vale Cigala July 20, 2020

Mediterranean soils and cultural heritage. Photo credit: Antonio Jordán (distributed via Imaggeo).

In today’s interview, we talk with Dr Maria Bostenaru. Maria is an architecture engineer interested in the complex relationship between urban areas, natural hazards, and heritage. She tells us how she thinks that involving more humanities, which include, for example, the study of languages, literature, archaeology, together with information technology solutions, may result in new important a ...[Read More]

DE BELLO VULCANICO 40-year scientific effort of ‘predicting the unpredictable’ since the 1980 eruption of Mount Saint Helens

Mattia Pistone July 6, 2020

Figure 1 - Vesuvius from the series of 18 paintings (oil on canvas) by Andy Warhol (1985). This painting shows Mt Vesuvius (in red) and Mount Somma (in blue).

Volcanoes arouse emotions in the soul of men: at the same time, they are fascinating and frighten the population that lives on their slopes when they erupt (Fig. 1). Volcanoes can strike without warning and wreak horrific destruction and death. As such, in the ancient time, volcanoes discharging explosive eruptions have been interpreted as the wrath of gods that destroys and annihilates all around ...[Read More]