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This chapter explores the natural hazards found on the planet Earth. These hazards range from the inconvenient to the catastrophic, and vary depending on which area of the planet proves conducive to a particular hazard—hazards are regional, borne about by the natural processes that the planet maintains to sustain life. Such a characteristic also makes these hazards paradoxical, in being both threatening and life-sustaining. The chapter thus looks at four broad categories of natural hazards that threaten the human species: weather and water hazards, which are the most widespread and most familiar group of hazards; surface hazards, responding to minor changes and adjustments in the Earth's surface rocks; hazards triggered by the deep-seated movements of the Earth's crust, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes; and extraterrestrial hazards, such as meteorite impacts.

Decisions in the area of natural hazards are normally based on probabilities. However, the baseline trend is evolving due to climate change and other changing processes (demographic change, globalization etc.). In parallel, during the last years, the understanding of the role of government has been changed from a traditional approach where the state itself provides all kinds of public services to a model, which is characterized mainly by private services, while the state only guarantees the quality of those services that are of public interest. Thus, societies go from a “predict-and-control” type of governance systems to a more reflexive and adaptive practice of disaster risk management. The main aim of this chapter is to understand the extent to which present governance systems are capable of managing deep uncertainty related to future disasters, as well as to develop proposals and strategies to strengthen this response capacity.

This paper reviews the changes in natural hazards that can be expected because of climate change, and discusses their socio-economic impacts. It stresses the fact that these impacts will first and foremost depend on risk management policies and adaptation strategies that will be implemented, and proposes insights into needed changes in policies. In particular, it investigates how decision-making approaches should be amended to account for the large uncertainty on future climate conditions, and the ability of cost-benefit analyses to take into account climate change and the related uncertainty.

This chapter explores the connection between the general discourse on human–environment relations and the study of natural hazard. The late Gilbert White, one of the leading geographers of the twentieth century and a leader in environmental hazards research endeavored to bring the idea of hazard and natural disaster back into the realm of public discourse and not let technical expertise and management limit its study. According to Kenneth Hewitt, ignoring the study of natural disaster puts a gaping hole in the “fabric of productive and orderly human relations with the habitat.” The study of natural disasters presents two contrasting views: on the one hand, they are considered the source of destruction of landscapes and, on the other, they are welcomed as dramatic moments of landscape change and renewal.

Active volcanism in Southeast Asia is associated with marked zones of activity in the Earth’s crust that run through south and east Indonesia and the Philippines. These zones are also characterized by frequent earthquakes and a measurable movement of tectonic plates, often in the order of 5 cm yr−1. The underlying mechanism is that of subduction of oceanic plates below continental plates; the rigidity of the moving plates causes ruptures and shockwise adjustments (earthquakes). The oceanic plate, while being under thrust, sinks down to great depths below the continental plate and in the process loses its rigidity owing to heating and part assimilation into the underlying magma. Earthquakes are caused in the zone where the subducted plate is still rigid. Chapter 1 in this book puts this phenomenon in the regional context. Volcanism in this zone is marked by frequent eruptions, mostly violent and of an explosive nature. It is manifest in distinct belts that comprise all (or nearly all) of the Philippines, and large parts of Indonesia with the exception of, roughly speaking, Kalimantan and Papua. The violence of the eruptions poses threats to human settlements in the surroundings of the volcanoes, to the cultivated lands, and the infrastructure. These threats may occur during and after the actual eruption, and they may indirectly cause other hazards as well. Moreover, volcanoes in apparent dormancy that have not erupted in historical times may still come to life as the interval between eruptions may be very long. In the present chapter these hazards will be discussed. Natural hazards have been defined in four ways, of which the 1982 definition of the United Nations Disaster Relief Co-ordinator (UNDRO) seems appropriate to follow in the context of volcanic hazards (Alexander 1993). UNDRO defines natural hazards as ‘the probability of occurrence within a specific period of time and within a given area of a potentially damaging phenomenon’. A hazard therefore may represent a situation with the possibility of a disaster that may affect the population and the environment which are in some degree of vulnerability.

Land Resources are resource endowments for economic development in order to improve the quality of life and living condition of the people over time. The present survey of research on land resources attempts a review of papers dealing with application of landform studies in socio-economic development. Study of landforms is essential for better land use, land capability, land evaluation, land development and land management. In the present study major characteristics of physical attributes of land and land based resources have been attempted, reviewing the processes of land degradation and desertification, landslides, coastal processes, glacial features and climate change and role of landforms in urban development and natural hazard zonation. The rapidly growing studies on land resources have undergone a rapid change in content, methodology and approach to the study of landforms and their application in social and economic spheres. It has been observed that depletion of land resources is the greatest challenge in this century. Pressure on land is rapidly increasing due to increasing population for finite land resources.

Catastrophe risk analysts (‘Cat analysts’) increasingly rely on catastrophe models to evaluate insurers’ exposure to catastrophe risks. Yet, distinct catastrophe models do not necessarily give the same evaluation of an insurer’s exposure to risk. How do Cat analysts manage the uncertainty generated by the use of multiple models? How do they combine the dissonant outputs of catastrophe models to make their own evaluation of their company’s exposure to risk? To answer these questions the authors discuss insights from a three-year participant observation at a catastrophe risks team of a European insurance company. Their findings depict Cat analysts as sophisticated ‘qualculators’ whose risk judgements integrate the risk evaluations of several catastrophe models and reflect their expert assessment of the quality of these models. In documenting the ‘qualculative’ practices that sustain the functioning of catastrophe insurance markets, this study offers new insights into the economization of natural hazards.

This chapter examines early modern understandings of the causes of earthquakes from the standpoint of intellectual history and the history of science. The discussion focuses on scientific thought but also pays some attention to religious matters, especially cosmology. After providing a brief overview of early and medieval theories of natural hazards and natural disasters, the chapter considers early modern academic theories of earthquakes. In particular, it looks at Buddhist, Western, and Chinese theoretical frameworks. It also describes main shocks and aftershocks, along with precursors and atmospheric phenomena as possible earthquake causes. Finally, it analyzes the Ansei Edo earthquake and its ramifications for the notion that yin-yang acts as the physical mechanism causing the earth to shake. It argues that the lack of a clearly superior explanation for earthquakes at the start of the Meiji era partly explains why older ideas about earthquakes influenced the modern development of seismology.

This book investigates the influence of the 1855 Ansei Edo earthquake in the context of major earthquakes of Japan's early modern and modern eras. It argues that the Ansei Edo earthquake played a pivotal role in a process of shaping conceptions of Japan in the realms of politics, religion, geography, and natural science. Furthermore, it produced new ideas about human agency vis-à-vis earthquakes that have affected notions of seismicity and society in modern Japan. The book also examines the relevance of time in a society's vulnerability to natural hazards and connects both factors to the Ansei Edo earthquake in terms of when it began and when it ended. This chapter provides some basic information about earthquakes that struck early modern and modern Japan and describes early modern Japanese society by focusing on social and political geography, the nature of bakufu power, mass media and literacy, religious and intellectual milieu, and the belief that earthquakes were caused by catfish living under the earth.

Lawpani village in Assam is situated in a valley bottom and the present problem is too much water rather than scarcity. Villagers have adapted to normal floods that fertilize soils and make chemical fertilized unnecessary. But a recent major flood resulted in sand-casting of fields and death of livestock. The inhabitants are recent immigrants from Nepal and Bihar who lack the necessary resources to regain their former livelihoods, testifying to the importance of social capital in terms of resilience. The fact that native Assamese never settled on the plain is an index of recurrent damaging floods in the past.