Science communication

Natural Hazards 101 – What is a – natural – hazard?

Vale Cigala September 14, 2020

Photo credit, from top left to bottom right: Pamela Trisolino (via Imaggeo), Michiel Baatsen (via Imaggeo), Stefan Doerr (via Imaggeo), Dimitri Defrance (via Imaggeo), Katja Bigge (via Imaggeo), Babak Hejrani (via Imaggeo), Elias Sch (via Pixabay) and Dan Killam (via Imaggeo).

We often talk about different natural hazards, how researchers investigate them and solutions to mitigate their effects on society, infrastructures and the environment. However, we have never really stopped for a moment to define a hazard, a natural hazard and much of the terminology in the field that can sometimes be evasive and not so straightforward to understand. Thus, we start this series of ...[Read More]

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]

Vitor Silva: 2020 Natural Hazards division medallist story

Giulia Roder April 6, 2020

Seismic risk training workshop for students organized at the EAFIT University in Medellin, Colombia (Photo credits: Vitor Silva)

In today’s interview, we talk with Dr Vitor Silva, who was awarded the 2020 Natural Hazard Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award for his fundamental contributions to the research on earthquake risk assessment. Seismic risk is the probable building damage and the number of people that are expected to be hurt or killed if a likely earthquake on a particular fault occurs. Disaster risk ca ...[Read More]