This paper demonstrates the application of cost effectiveness analysis and cost benefit analysis to alternative avalanche risk reduction strategies in Davos, Switzerland. The advantages as well as limitations of such analysis for natural hazards planning are discussed with respect to 16...

Assessment of social vulnerability has been recognized as a critical step to understand natural hazard risks and to enhance effective response capabilities. Although significant achievements have been made in social vulnerability researches, little is know about the comprehensive profile of...

This article estimates the non-first-order economic loss in Japan due to a future increase in tropical cyclones. One possible effect of global warming could be the increase in intensity of tropical cyclones. Using historical storm tracks between the years 1978 and 2007 and altering their...

More than ever before, the last decade revealed the immense vulnerability of the world’s cities to natural hazards. Neither the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, the hurricane Katrina in 2005, the cyclone Nargis in 2008 nor the earthquakes in Sichuan in 2008 or in Haiti 2010 found the...

Natural hazards are becoming increasingly significant these days. There is a need for documentation that concisely presents the type and magnitude of natural hazards as an aid to political and economic decision making.With the aim of presenting the global distribution of exposure to the most...

Automatic environmental monitoring networks enforced by wireless communication technologies provide large and ever increasing volumes of data nowadays. The use of this information in natural hazard research is an important issue. Particularly useful for risk assessment and decision making are...

We examine mortality in five terrestrial species of game animals resulting from an extreme flood event in Central Europe in July 1997. We present species-specific mortality rates and collate them with local abundances to show the susceptibilities of the different species to flood mortality. We...

In this article, disasters are understood as processes that have different impacts on social routines in terms of scale, scope and duration. The extent of adaptive processes in society can provide the ground for a rough classification of disaster types. Such classification has, on the one hand,...

The level of exposure to the impact of natural and man-made hazards of the main critical facilities at Grand Cayman (GC), Cayman Islands, was determined using the methodology developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Coastal Services Center. Previous studies identified...

Hundreds of natural catastrophes occur worldwide every year—there were 780 loss events per year on average over the last 10 years. Since 1980, these disasters have claimed over two million lives and caused losses worth US$ 3,000 billion. The deadliest disasters were caused by earthquakes: the...