To what extent can hazards be controlled and managed?

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Hazards

To what extent can hazards be controlled and managed?

Hazards are the bane of most LEDC‘s throughout the world retarding development and causing colossal amounts of destruction and death, killing over a hundred and forty people in one sea surge alone in 1991 in Bangladesh. This has meant that there has been a desperate response to these natural phenomena by rich and poor governments alike to reduce the affects of natural hazards, be it through controlling the hazard or managing it. There are many different natural hazards that people suffer from and many different ways by which governments and people and control and manage them, however, I cannot speak here about all of them in sufficient detail, so I have decided to concentrate, on the most dangerous type of hazard, floods, which cause the most death and destruction than any hazard, affecting 32% of all people affected by natural hazards. Than I shall speak about how drought, which causes amazing amounts of damage and affects 30% of all people affected by hazards, but causes less than 3% of deaths, is managed since unlike flooding the damage is more superficial, I shall contrast this to Earthquakes, which cannot be controlled, however the amount of management that takes place, can reduce its affect massively reducing the amount of death to almost nil.

Floods, these occur all over the world and are due to many different, factors, many of the worst affected areas being affected by multiple factors, both eustatic and isostatic. This is well illustrated in the UK where, we suffered a flash flood in 1953, due to intense low pressure in the North Sea, strong winds, heavy rain + snow melt, exceptionally high spring tide and storm surge. Plus this was, made worse since coastal protection, was in a poor state of repair, due to the war and drained salt marshes, however the affects were not lasting and a few months later all affects of the flood, except the few hundred casualties were erased. This can be contrasted heavily with India, my case study, which suffers frequent floods, which help maintain soil fertility, however when the monsoon rains are heavier than normal, India can suffer severe flooding, like that in 1998 which made 30 million people homeless, destroyed over 300’000 homes and caused the deaths of at least 700 people. Post 1998 there have been few changes to help control the flood, though some methods have been put forward. It has been said, that they should seize to build embankments along the rivers since, there are simply too many, making this method uneconomical, plus this methods creates, more problems since, it causes sediment to build up on the river bed, making flooding more likely and creating problems further down the river. So it has been proposed that they should build, embankments (bunds) around major cities e.g. Dhaka, to protect city dwellers and provide a place of refuge, for rural dwellers when evacuated.

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        Coexistent to this plan, is one by which they could open up embankments further up the river allowing massive flood planes for controlled flooding, to flood that are less densely populated to relieve the lower course of the river, of discharge and sediment. This management scheme, to reduce the affects of heavy monsoon rains has also been proposed with the idea of planting trees in the Himalayas, in Nepal and India where massive amounts of deforestation has taken place, increasing the sediment load of the river and building up the river beds in the delta making it more likely to ...

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