Geohazards Caused by Human Activity

INTECH published The long shadow of Human Generated Geohazards: Risks and Crises, our chapter in the book entitled Geohazards Caused by Human Activity!

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Geohazards Caused by Human Activity

Our chapter in geohazards caused by human activity 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.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank InTech and in particular Prof. Arvin Farid (Editor) as well as Mr. Edi Lipovic Publishing Process Manager for their outstanding job and very pleasant, precise, efficient cooperation.

Reference

Oboni, F., Oboni, C., The Long Shadow of Human‐Generated Geohazards: Risks and Crises, Geohazards Caused by Human Activity, Prof. Arvin Farid (Ed.), InTech, ISBN 978-953-51-2802-1, Print ISBN 978-953-51-2801-4, November 30, 2016
Keywords: Risk, Crises, Social, Interdependencies, Consequences, Glossary, tolerance, geoethics, anthropocene

Tagged with: Anthropocene, Consequences, crises, Damage evaluations, definition of risk tolerance, geoethics, Geohazards, glossary, Human Activity, interdependencies, multidimensional consequences analysis, risk, social, technical glossary of risk, tolerance

Category: Consequences, Hazard, Mitigations, Probabilities, Probability Impact Graphs, Risk analysis, Risk management, Tolerance/Acceptability