Product Description

The expanded fifth edition of Environmental Hazards provides a balanced overview of all the major rapid-onset events that threaten people and what they value in the twenty-first century. It integrates cutting-edge material from the physical and social sciences to demonstrate how natural and human systems interact to place communities of all sizes, and at all stages of economic development, at risk. It also shows how the existing losses to life and property can be reduced.

Part I of this established textbook defines basic concepts of hazard, risk, vulnerability and disaster. Critical attention is given to the evolution of theory, to the scale of disaster impact and to the various strategies that have been developed to minimise the impact of damaging events. Part II employs a consistent chapter structure to explain how individual hazards, such as earthquakes, severe storms, floods and droughts, plus biophysical and technological processes, create distinctive patterns of loss throughout the world. The ways in which different societies make a positive response to these threats are placed in the context of ongoing global change.

In this extensively revised edition:

• An entirely new and innovative chapter explains how modern-day complexity contributes to the generation of hazard and risk
• Additional material supplies fresh perspectives on landslides, biophysical hazards and the increasingly important role of global-scale processes
• The increased use of boxed sections allows a greater focus on significant generic issues and offers more opportunity to examine a carefully selected range of up-to-date case studies
• Each chapter now concludes with an annotated list of key resources, including further reading and relevant websites.

Environmental Hazards is a well-written and generously illustrated introduction to all the natural, social and technological events that combine to cause death and destruction across the globe. It draws on the latest research findings to guide the student from common problems, theories and policies to explore practical, real-world situations. This authoritative, yet accessible, book captures both the complexity and dynamism of environmental hazards and has become essential reading for students of every kind seeking to understand the nature and consequences of a most important contemporary issue.

Customer Reviews (2)

Great Purchase
This book is well written and easy to understand.I bought it used, but it looked basically new.

Earth's Fury
It is a very clear book, and it has many ilustrations to show the natural hazards in "action".Useful as a reference book for applied Geology. ... Read more

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Human activities have had a huge impact on the environment and landscape, through industrialisation and land-use change, leading to climate change, deforestation, desertification, land degradation, air and water pollution. These impacts are strongly linked to the occurrence of geomorphological hazards, such as floods, landslides, snow avalanches, soil erosion, and others. Geomorphological work includes not only the understanding but the mapping and modelling of Earth's surface processes, many of which directly affect human societies. In addition, geomorphologists are becoming increasingly involved with the dimensions of societal problem solving, through vulnerability analysis, hazard and risk assessment and management. The work of geomorphologists is therefore of prime importance for disaster prevention. An international team of geomorphologists have contributed their expertise to this volume, making this a scientifically rigorous work for a wide audience of geomorphologists and other Earth scientists, including those involved in environmental science, hazard and risk assessment, management and policy. ... Read more

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The book is a richly illustrated, pictorial album. The content and arrangement of the book is based on a collection of original rare engravings belonging to the private collection of Jan Kozák. The individual full-page reproductions give historical views on natural disasters such as: earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, avalanches, landslides and rock falls. The illustrations are accompanied by informative text describing the geophysical and historical background of the disasters, the origin of each of the engravings and the stories behind the events as well as modern day perspectives.

Product Description
Taking stock of what is known about the geophysical and human aspects of natural hazards, this volume provides a cross-disciplinary framework for managing these often cataclysmic events. Unlike traditional texts that utilize a hazard-by-hazard approach, the book integrates perspectives from the physical and social sciences to identify and describe general principles that can enhance our understanding of the physical, social, technical, and economic forces inherent in extreme geophysical events. Focusing on the physical characteristics hazards share, such as magnitude, duration, and frequency, the authors consider individual and community perceptions of these events and explore the effects of different attitudes onbehavior and response. In its pragmatic rethinking of hazards policy, the book brings to the fore political and economic factors and provides richly detailed examples of planning-based approaches to hazards management.
... Read more

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Written for AS and A level specifications, the text includes detail on geological, climatic and geomorphic hazards including: the causal physical processes and natural systems involved their social, economic and demographic impacts human responses, and strategies for prediction prevention and management ... Read more

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Natural disasters, response, recovery, and mitigation are important topics for policy makers, sustainable development specialists, technical experts and teachers. The occurrences and distributions of natural disaster events and the responses and mitigation practices associated with them are presented in the book. Experts on natural disaster topics and regional experts on natural disasters provide compelling information. A rich background in natural disasters and the places where they frequently occur is presented. The chapter authors' discussions address the physical attributes of natural events and secondly, the role of education and training as mitigation strategies. This second perspective examines mitigation practices. Alternatives beyond disaster response and recovery are being practiced in many places. The role of education and training is highlighted. It is intended that the book be a welcome addition to working in natural disasters policies, education, training, and improving the public understanding of natural disasters and the mitigation of their effects.

This volume includes a CD-ROM containing electronic versions, in full color if available, of the figures which are all printed in black-and-white in the book.

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The Sixteenth International Tsunami Symposium, TSUNAMI¿93, drew more than 150 scientists, engineers and specialists intsunami research and disaster mitigation from 13 countries. Theleading contributions to the symposium, selected after a rigorousreviewing process, are presented here under three broad headings:

• - Tsunami Generation, Propagation and Inundation: TheirPrediction and Simulation.
• - Tsunami Disasters: Their Prevention and Mitigation.
• - Tsunami Observations, and Warning Systems and Plansfor Improvement.

Product Description
This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's large-scale digitization efforts. The Library seeks to preserve the intellectual content of items in a manner that facilitates and promotes a variety of uses. The digital reformatting process results in an electronic version of the original text that can be both accessed online and used to create new print copies. The Library also understands and values the usefulness of print and makes reprints available to the public whenever possible. This book and hundreds of thousands of others can be found in the HathiTrust, an archive of the digitized collections of many great research libraries. For access to the University of Michigan Library's digital collections, please see http://www.lib.umich.edu and for information about the HathiTrust, please visit http://www.hathitrust.org ... Read more

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This book examines how Geographic Information Technologies (GIT) are being implemented to improve our understanding of a variety of hazard and disaster situations. The volume is a compilation of recent research using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing (RS) and other technologies such as Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to examine urban hazard and disaster issues. The goal is to improve and advance the use of such technologies during four classic phases of hazard and disaster research: response, recovery, preparation and mitigation. The focus is on urban areas, broadly defined in order to encompass rapidly growing and densely populated areas.

The material presented is multidisciplinary, with contributions from scholars in Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America, and is presented in five key sections:

• sea level rise and flood analysis
• earthquakes and tsunamis and international applications
• hurricane response/recovery
• metropolitan case studies
• evacuation studies

This volume contributes to our understanding of extreme events in urban environments with the use of GIT and expanding its role at the local, regional, state and federal levels. The book is a valuable reference for academic researchers and professionals and practitioners working in hazard management and mitigation.

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In the winter of 1811-12, a series of large earthquakes in the New Madrid seismic zone-often incorrectly described as the biggest ever to hit the United States-shook the Midwest. Today the federal government ranks the hazard in the Midwest as high as California's and is pressuring communities to undertake expensive preparations for disaster.

Coinciding with the two-hundredth anniversary of the New Madrid earthquakes,Disaster Deferred revisits these earthquakes, the legends that have grown around them, and the predictions of doom that have followed in their wake. Seth Stein clearly explains the techniques seismologists use to study Midwestern quakes and estimate their danger. Detailing how limited scientific knowledge, bureaucratic instincts, and the media's love of a good story have exaggerated these hazards, Stein calmly debunks the hype surrounding such predictions and encourages the formulation of more sensible, less costly policy. Powered by insider knowledge and an engaging style,Disaster Deferred shows how new geological ideas and data, including those from the Global Positioning System, are painting a very different-and much less frightening-picture of the future.

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From tidal waves and sandstorms to lava flows and glaciers, natural geological processes are often hazardous to human life. This book examines the scientific principles behind these processes, explaining how and why they pose a frequent threat. ... Read more

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Infrastructure Risk Management Processes: Natural, Accidental, and Deliberate Hazards, discusses quantification of exposure and vulnerability of complex, spatially distributed systems, yielding estimates of local and system-wide potential losses, for different alternatives in multi-hazard decision situations. These situations require an integration of scientific, engineering, social, administrative, psychological, and political processes – with advances, setbacks, and many uncertainties. This monograph consists of eight papers that illustrate work done to date and plans for work to be done on managing these risks for potable water, electric power, transportation and other infrastructure systems threatened by earthquakes, tsunamis, landslides, severe storms, saboteurs, and various other hazards. This monograph, produced by the Risk and Vulnerability Committee of the Council on Disaster Risk Management (CDRM), is a sequel to a previous monograph, Acceptable Risk Processes: Lifelines and Natural Hazards (2002), published by ASCE. Topics include: • Hazard Issues • Systems Evaluation Issues • Risk Criteria Issues • Systems Management Issues. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent follow up to the 2002 ASCE Monograph
This excellent collection of papers develops a context for decision-making in an integrative framework.This is a follow up to the 2002 ASCE monograph on Acceptable Risk Processes; this one was produced by the Risk and Vulnerability Committee of the Council on Disaster Risk Management.Note the interesting addition of intentional disasters. ... Read more

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The initial employment of tree rings in natural hazard studies was simply as a dating tool and rarely exploited other environmental information and records of damage contained within the tree. However, these unique, annually resolved, tree-ring records preserve valuable archives of past earth-surface processes on timescales of decades to centuries. As many of these processes are significant natural hazards, understanding their distribution, timing and controls provides valuable information that can assist in the prediction, mitigation and defence against these hazards and their effects on society.

Tree Rings and Natural Hazards provides many illustrations of these themes, demonstrating the application of tree rings to studies of snow avalanches, rockfalls, landslides, floods, earthquakes, wildfires and several other processes. Several of the chapters are "classic studies", others represent recent applications using previously unpublished material. They illustrate the breadth and diverse applications of contemporary dendrogeomorphology and underline the growing potential to expand such studies, possibly leading to the establishment of a range of techniques and approaches that may become standard practice in the analysis of natural hazards in the future.

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Including an extensive range of case studies covering the most drought-prone and most affected countries, the contributors examine technologies, planning methodologies and mitigation actions from recent drought experiences world-wide. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Comprehensive, global discussion of drought
This two-volume set is the most comprehensive discussion of drought available. Sections in the book address drought prediction, drought monitoring, drought impacts, adaptation to drought, drought management, andlinks with other global issues. Within each section typically half a dozenchapters address these issues either globally or for individual countriesor regions. Each chapter is written by experts (I wrote one of thechapters, but I do not receive royalties or any other benefit from sales ofthe book), usually from the country of interest. If you want to understandwhat scientists know about droughts, and what we know about mitigatingdrought impacts, this is the book for you. The global perspective isunique. ... Read more