Assess the relative merits of classifying hazards by their spatial occurrence and by their scale of impact.

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Assess the relative merits of classifying hazards by their spatial occurrence and by their scale of impact.

Many different events (natural or caused or modified by human activities) give rise to threats which might kill or injure humans, damage property and structures, change or alter the environment. These include  (like earthquakes, volcanoes, storms, floods and droughts).

Hazards can be defined as, a natural hazard as a naturally occurring process or event which has the potential to cause loss of life or property. There is an extremely wide range of natural hazards, some of which are increased due to the actions of man. Impacts of hazards can be increased by human activity. For example, heavy rainfall is more likely to lead to flooding if vegetation has been removed from hill slopes. Many people in Bangladesh choose to live in the low-lying Ganges Delta as it provides good farming land, but it is the area most vulnerable to flooding. The general rule is that the more people there are, the more vulnerable they are to a disaster the greater its impact will be.

        There are different types of classifying hazards, this has raised the question of how suitable these classifications are, their advantages and disadvantaged and if they should be classified in this way.  However, classifications help us to focus on the key characteristics of the hazards, so that they can be clearly understood, this way the responses to hazards can be managed and planned carefully and future predictions to the impacts of hazards can be made.

There are different types of hazards; this is why one type of hazards classification is by geophysical processes. This classification can be seen below in the table and as the table shows this type of classification is simple and easy to understand, however it is difficult to put one hazard under one simple cause, because some hazards go into different categories, also some hazard cause secondary hazards, which can also be put in the same cause, this means that a simple classifications is not appropriate, although it covers both the LEDC and MEDC but does not tell us about the impact or future predictions of the hazards.

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Cause- This is another way of classifying hazards. Some hazards are natural, such as earthquakes or volcanoes caused by tectonic activity. However recently some hazards are not natural, they have been caused by man-made activities, such as increase inn greenhouse gases, causing increase in storms and cyclones, due to increase in global warming caused by human pollution. Also floods have been increased by human activities, due to high deforestation increasing the impacts of flooding. An example of this is the flash flood disaster which killed over 83 people on a campsite in Spain on 8 August 1996. This event was ...

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