Geohazard research, modeling, and assessment for disaster risk reduction

Abstract

Scientific understanding of lithosphere dynamics, earthquake occurrence, volcanic eruption, lava flow and other geohazards events as well as geophysical hazard assessments are greatly advanced for the last several decades. Meanwhile despite these major advancements, yet we are not seeing significant disaster risk reduction and a concomitant decline in disaster impacts and losses. There are at least two major issues that should be improved before significant reduction in disaster losses: enhancing geohazards research and integrating it into disaster risk analysis and risk assessment, and convolving the research with policymaking. This paper, presented at the international conference ``Data Intensive System Analysis for Geohazard Studies'''' (Sochi, Russia, 2016), highlights the importance of geohazards studies as a contribution to integrated research on disaster risk. To improve hazard assessments, I present here (i) an alternative approach to the seismic hazard analysis involving information on recorded, historic and simulated earthquakes as well as (ii) advanced quantitative modeling of lava flows due to effusive volcanic eruptions. Risk assessment efforts toward a reduction of disasters are then discussed in the framework of system analysis approach.