Presentations

IDRC 2014, Davos, Switzerland, August 28, 2014

Session on “Global Disasters: Addressing the Risk Associated with Extreme Geohazards”

Organized by the GHCP.

Geohazards and Monitoring Networks

Paola Campus, European Science Foundation, 1 quai Lezay-Marnésia, 67080 Strasbourg cedex, France

The recursive occurrence of geohazards (volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, bolides) on our Planet throughout the last few millennia have often impacted on local and regional scales human settlements, causing significant deaths and losses of goods. In some extreme cases such events have dramatically impacted civilizations, producing high losses of human lives and very long terms changes in the environment. The current status of our Planet, characterized by societies progressively clustering around megacities, often located in hazardous areas and heavily depending from fast and efficient transfer of information and persons faces a crucial challenge: to develop an effective resilience program to geohazards and, in particular, to extreme geohazards.

The relatively poor knowledge of the impact on populations and goods of past geohazards and extreme geohazards derives from a lack of historical records of such events, which have often become part of the ancestral memories of populations, thus making it nearly impossible to extract a realistic estimate of the real damage inflicted to communities and structures. The development of an effective Disaster Risk Reduction program and of a consequent robust resilience certainly needs to be based on a holistic approach, involving the main stakeholders facing this challenge: geohazards scientific experts, social sciences experts, Government Officials and Policy Makers. However, the very first tool supporting such holistic approach should be the establishment and maintenance of a global network of monitoring systems, based on synergetic technologies capable of mapping in real-time all the areas at risk on our Planet and share timely information with the main stakeholders. A description of a number of key events and of the contribution to their monitoring of existing global networks will be discussed.



Last edited 02 December 2016
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