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Highlights from the Annual Conference of the Natural Hazards Center, July 2023

Recovery Diva

For many of us the annual conference of the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado/Boulder was a “must attend” event for many years.

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Stop Blaming Climate for Disasters

Recovery Diva

Natural hazards such as floods, droughts and heatwaves become disasters as a result of societal vulnerability, that is, a propensity of people, societies and ecosystems to be harmed. Often, people’s social, political and economic status determines the nature of differential and disproportionate impacts1.

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FEMA Administrator Visits Univ. of CO’s Hazards Center

Recovery Diva

An excerpt: “Among the research topics that could support the agency’s resilience goals are work related to climate migration, risk communication and refining social vulnerability indices. These are issues that are central to the work of CU researchers in IBS and across the university, including in engineering and the physical sciences.

Hazard 100
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The United Kingdom's National Risk Register - 2023 Edition

Emergency Planning

b) In terms of its methodology, the NRR discusses vulnerability but does not accept the premise (Hewitt 1983) that it is the major component of risk. Hence, the risk register largely discusses hazards and threats, not risks sensu stricto. (e) e) The risks are prioritised by giving most weight to those associated with hostile activity.

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Resilience is an illusion

Emergency Planning

Secondly, and more importantly, vulnerability, risk, impact and their controlling factors are all trending. I recommend going back to vulnerability and endeavouring to identify, understand and reduce it. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 13(11): 2707-2716. What can we do instead? References Alexander, D.E.

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Cities, Cultural Heritage and the Culture of Responding to Floods

Emergency Planning

In 2021 a colleague who studies natural hazards wrote to me that "our institute is all but destroyed and colleagues have lost their homes". Powerful floods struck Puerto Lumbreras again in 2012. Europe is not well protected against flooding. Even in orderly, well-organised Germany its impact can be devastating.

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Reflections on the Turkish-Syrian Earthquakes of 6th February 2023: Building Collapse and its Consequences

Emergency Planning

Most of them are highly vulnerable to seismic forces. Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences 15: 931-945. Natural Hazards 109: 161-200. Many, perhaps most, people in Turkey live in multi-storey, multiple occupancy reinforced concrete frame buildings. It is these that collapse. Ecemis, S.Z. Korkmaz, M.H.