We published a Chapter in the book Geohazards Caused by Human Activity entitled The Long Shadow of Human‐Generated Geohazards: Risks and Crises.

You can freely download the text from INTECH here .  We sincerely hope you will enjoy it. Please drop us a note and let us know your comments on the chapter.

The Chapter is geared toward focusing attention on the “damage and risk” side of geohazards rather than on their generating processes. Indeed, assessors often neglect and oversimplify damage evaluations in predictive studies. As a result, risks are poorly understood. People often consider them as the mere expression of the probability or likelihood of an adverse event. In this chapter, we use numerous real‐life examples and discuss among other subjects:

• technical glossary of risk, damages, crises,
• multidimensional consequences analysis, and finally
• definition of risk tolerance.

The Chapter also focuses on ethical (geo‐ethical) issues linked to geohazards caused by human activity and their mitigation decisions and possible unintended consequences. The discussion includes the sometimes excessive and sometimes lacking (blindness) perception of risks by the public, corporate, and public officers. We discuss the root cause of some odd human behaviors when facing risks (biases), like the survivor bias. In the anthropocene, geohazards cast a long and often misunderstood shadow on human activities, development, and survival.  Hence the title of our chapter.

Benefits

By understanding how to model consequences and better evaluating risks and crises, we will be able to alleviate human and environmental suffering, foster sustainable development and geoethics.

Categories

Reconnaissance of Natural Disasters, Forensics, Risk & Reliability