Related topics: japan · earthquake

Common plant could help reduce food insecurity, researchers find

An often-overlooked water plant that can double its biomass in two days, capture nitrogen from the air—making it a valuable green fertilizer—and be fed to poultry and livestock could serve as life-saving food for humans ...

Geological phenomenon widening the Atlantic Ocean

An upsurge of matter from deep beneath the Earth's crust could be pushing the continents of North and South America further apart from Europe and Africa, new research has found.

Earthquakes and tsunamis in Europe?

Since the tsunami that devastated coasts around the Indian Ocean in December 2004 and the Fukushima disaster in March 2011, people worldwide are aware that geological processes in the ocean can cause significant damage. From ...

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Disaster

A disaster is a natural or man-made hazard that has come to fruition, resulting in an event of substantial extent causing significant physical damage or destruction, loss of life, or drastic change to the environment. A disaster can be ostensively defined as any tragic event with great loss stemming from events such as earthquakes, floods, catastrophic accidents, fires, or explosions.

In contemporary academia, disasters are seen as the consequence of inappropriately managed risk. These risks are the product of hazards and vulnerability. Hazards that strike in areas with low vulnerability are not considered a disaster, as is the case in uninhabited regions.

Developing countries suffer the greatest costs when a disaster hits – more than 95 percent of all deaths caused by disasters occur in developing countries and underdeveloped countries, and losses due to natural disasters are 20 times greater (as a percentage of GDP) in developing countries than in industrialized countries.

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