Center for Extreme Load Effects on Structures

Hazards


High Wind	Flooding	Earthquakes	Fire	Aging

Hazards can hurt people, property, and communities. Hazardous events can be natural, such as hurricanes and fires, or caused by people, such as terrorist events, industrial accidents, or even poor planning or maintenance.

Risk from extreme events is rising, due to:

The world's urban areas growing more concentrated
The built environment becoming denser
People moving to hazard-prone areas

Reducing damage from hazards requires:

Hazard prediction
Risk and vulnerability assessment
Hazard planning and prevention
Disaster management
Education and awareness

Preventing hazards from becoming disasters

We cannot prevent natural hazards, but CELES researchers believe communities and businesses can minimize damage. It takes awareness, research, technology, planning, and management. Extreme events do not have to become disasters.

The most devastating hazards, including severe earthquakes, are unpredictable and can occur hundreds of years apart, making it difficult for people to understand and prepare for the consequences.

Hazard refers to the likelihood or expected occurrence of an event. Hazards are often described as probabilities.

Risk is the combination of the probability of a hazard occurring and its expected consequences and can be described in dollars or casualties.

Areas with low probability can have high risk from hazards

When engineers and scientists calculate risk from different hazards, regions with lower hazard can have an equal or higher risk factor than regions where the hazard is common. Although the western United States has a higher earthquake hazard, the eastern part of the country has an equal risk. This is due to a higher population density, character of the bedrock, and structures with little resilience to earthquakes.

Catastrophes are growing

Major U.S. catastrophes in general are growing and will continue to grow, partly because of what was done in the past to reduce risk. For example, building a dam or levee may protect a community from the small- and medium-sized floods that the structures were designed to handle, but the additional development that occurs because of this protection will mean even greater losses during an extreme flood that causes the dam or levee to fail.