Unit 1:  What Are Environmental Hazards? 
             Answers to Activities
 
 
Activity 1.1   My Very Own Disaster 
Students should relate their experience or that of a close relative or acquaintance clearly and interestingly and should finish the activity having gained an awareness of the following main points:
  • hazards are phenomena that affect all of us, frequently in physical or metaphysical areas close to home;
  • different people may experience the same or similar hazard event in different ways;
  • what are hazards in one region may not be perceived as hazards elsewhere (see Supporting Material 1.1 for a personal account of a snow storm in Texas that makes this point well).
    •   
    Activity 1.2   Delineating the Hazards of Places 
     
    The results of this activity depend on the countries chosen, the amount of information students are able to find, and their individual creativity and diligence. In evaluating students’ reports, assess the following aspects of their presentation:
  • clarity of presentation (tables and charts constructed, visuals, speech)
  • diversity of information included
  • number of Web sites used
  • overall informational content of the hazard profile
  • inclusion of appropriate contextual information regarding the ability to respond to hazards
    •  Below is an example of a hazardscape of one country, Indonesia.

    Indonesian Hazardscape

    Located in Southeast Asia, Indonesia is an archipelago of over 13,000 islands, 6,000 of which are inhabited. Indonesia’s location near the Equator places it along major sea lanes between the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The total land area is about 1.8 million sq. kilometers with over 54,000 km of coastline. The population is estimated to be about 203.5 million with a growth rate of 1.5%.

    Current environmental issues include deforestation, water pollution from industrial wastes, sewage, and air pollution in urban areas. Natural hazards include floods, droughts, tsunamis, earthquakes, landslides, and volcanoes. Human health hazards include exposure to hepatitis B, Japanese encephalitis, typhoid, rabies, cholera, and malaria in rural areas.

    Indonesia is party to numerous international agreements concerning biodiversity, climate change, endangered species, hazardous wastes, the law of the sea, nuclear test bans, ozone layer protection, ship pollution, tropical timber, and wetlands. Japan supplies most of Indonesia’s disaster and economic aid.

    Disaster statistics and background information on the country can be obtained by conducting a Web search on Indonesia (e.g., at the following site: http://www.polrisk.com/ where you select Indonesia and go through the fact sheet, the geography section and so on). Then check any of the hazard-related Web sites on specific information. For very good information on Indonesian volcanoes, for instance, go to the Volcano World web site at the University of North Dakota (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu), ready with narratives, updated disaster statistics, satellite imagery, photographs, and so on. From this site comes the table shown below. The amount of information for some countries is enormous!
     

    The Deadliest Eruptions in Indonesia
    (Eruptions with > 500 known human fatalities)*
     
    Deaths
    Volcano
    Date
    Major Cause of Death
    92,000 Tamborra 1815 Starvation
    36,417 Krakatau 1883 Tsunami
    5,110 Kelut 1919 Mudflows
    4,011 Galunggung 1882 Mudflows
    2,957 Papandayan 1772 Ash flows
    1,184 Agung 1963 Ash flows
    * Does not include major eruption in the 16th century or the Merapi eruption in 1994 for which fatalities are either not known or not >500 people. 
    Source:  Extracted from a table ("The deadliest eruptions") at the Volcano World Web site (http://volcano.und.nodak.edu) for South East Asia, June 1996.
     

    Below are two examples of charting disaster statistics for a different country, Ecuador.

     
     
     
     
     
    Activity 1.3  Five Myths About Hazards 
    The following myths or misconceptions are described in greater detail in Jones (1993):
    1. tendency to focus on conspicuous, dramatic, high-energy events of questionable regional or global significance in terms of losses;
    2. tendency to focus on large-scale loss events ("disasters"), denying attention to smaller, cumulative events;
    3. tendency to concentrate on death toll as the easiest obtainable, but maybe least telling impact statistic;
    4. tendency to emphasize the powerlessness of humans vis à vis "natural" forces;
    5. tendency to highlight the value of techno-centric solutions to hazard problems.
    Students should present a clear analysis of the extent to which the news articles that they have chosen reflect the myths that Jones describes; they may or may not find all five represented in the paper. For those myths they can identify, students should provide examples. This will give you an opportunity to see whether they adequately prepared for class, understood the readings, and can apply the knowledge of these myths to a text on hazards.
     
     
    Activity 1.4   Differences in Hazard Perception 
    The results of students’ surveys cannot be predicted, as they will depend on the types of environmental risks present, the kinds of neighborhoods surveyed, the gender and ethnic mix, and the survey questions and hypotheses students investigated. Use the list below as a guide for assessing students’ work: