Natural Hazards and Risks in Urban Environment

A lecture by Dr. Philip on Risks in Urban areas gave me a wider insight to the risks in urban areas, which are associated with dense population and economically importance than rural areas.

The ovious natural disasters may cause damages if they are not well noticed beforehand. Earthquakes, volcanoes, drought etc may be among them. I have got a different way of seeing the risks, specially those which are taken by careless decisions. There are instances like investing/settling in an area prone to flood, settlements near by mountains where land sliding is common, city planning which makes infrastructures which may cause much damages like air ports in center city etc.

Relocation after a certain disaster is noticed may be a serious case. Because of its demanding socio economical impact, relocation seems an unlikely happening.

In analysing the Hazard Weighting for EU cities in our group, we first put the disasters in order of importance. After that we assigned their weights, percentage figures which are agreed upon by most of the group members.

If I made the same discussion with the dwellers and all stakeholders of my home town the probable results would be

• Drought - 40%
• Flood - 30%
• Land slide - 20%
• Storm/Cyclones- 5%
• Forest Fires - 2%
• Extreme Temperatures and storm surge - 1% each
• Earthquakes, Tsunami and Volcanic Eruption - 0%