IB Geography 2011

The US federal agency charged with ensuring that all aspect of the human response to hazards and risks in the USA is carried out effectively.

A brief text on Haiti earthquake - Causes (plate boundaries), Intensity, Infrastructure etc.

The 7.0-magnitude Haiti earthquake would be a strong, potentially destructive earthquake anywhere, but it is an unusually strong event for Haiti, with even more potential destructive impact because of the weak infrastructure of the impoverished nation. Sliding plates: Earthquakes typically occur along the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of Earth's crust, called plates, which move relative to one another, most of the time at an imperceptibly slow pace. In the case of the Haiti quake, the Caribbean and North American plates Intensity and infrastructure: Another factor in the damage that a quake can cause is it intensity. While magnitude is a measurement of how much energy is released by an earthquake, intensity is "simply an estimate or a measure of how strongly that earthquake was felt," said Don Blakeman, an earthquake analyst with the United States Geological Survey.

Methods used to quantify the intensity of disasters

An article highlighting the massive challeneges associated with the aid effort and long term reconstruction within Haiti, with a particular focus on corruption.

Quantifying the spatial extent of disasters through GIS mapping - from US based FEMA

A news article outlining the impact of the recession on migrants from eastern Europe living in rural areas of the UK.

Real time disaster alerts and updates from around the world - Haiti and Tungurahua are both flagged (as of Feb 3rd 2010)

This site has a lot of detail about efforts to reduce the losses from hazards and disasters, claiming to be - "serving the information needs of the disaster reduction community"

BBC World discussion on how to respond to disaster contrasting prevention with reaction.

Again from Swiss Re; a section on risk perception of natural hazards with a particular focus on how it relates to insurance.

Information from Swiss Re Insurance company about major events such as Katrina and the Asian Tsunami with a particular focus on insured losses.

Earthquake prediction in California, a brief discussion of progress made so far.

Guardian photographer and filmmaker David Levene spent a week in Port-au-Prince documenting the human cost of the recent earthquake"

Time magazine collection of articles with links to additional information.

A breakdown of the stages in storm forecasting and prediction.

Great audio slides-how from National Geographic.

National Geographic article reviewing Chernobyl 20 years on from the explosion.

Detailed and comprehensive site from the US covering all aspects of the hurricane hazard including formation, prediction and modeling, impacts and human response.

Details of an earthquake model developed by the USGS to help with understanding earthquakes and actually show why earthquakes are so hard to predict.

A comparison of the post-event response between Haiti and tsunami hit Aceh (Indonesia), including a discussion of what has goone wrong in Haiti and an attempt to explain why aid has become bottlenecked.