ANALYSIS OF HAZARD, VULNERABILITY, POPULATION, AND INFRASTRUCTURE

The Pacific Rim, the so-called "Ring of Fire", is a region subject to many different natural hazards that occur with varying patterns of frequency and intensity. Although the number and size of most natural hazards in the Pacific Rim region have not dramatically increased during the last century, the frequency and magnitude of natural disasters have. Exploding populations and unprecedented urban development within the past century have helped fuel this increase in the number and severity of disasters. Moreover, networks of people, information, and commodities now traverse great distances to serve even larger concentrations of people. Understanding the risks posed by these increasingly connected populations by natural hazards therefore requires an expanded regional analysis. To better understand the "future of disasters", we calculate the potential impact of five significant natural hazards: earthquake, flood, tropical storm, tsunami and volcanic eruption and assess the vulnerability of each of two elements that are at risk: people and infrastructure. These two assessments reflect different repercussions from natural disasters: losses of life and disruption of economic activity. Because population and infrastructure are distributed heterogeneously across the Pacific Rim region, two contrasting portraits of risk emerge: human populations are most vulnerable and most at risk in "developing" countries while high-valued infrastructure is at risk in "developed" countries. We also propose the addition of another component in the measurement of risk, a measure of interconnectivity or interdependence - the dynamic linkages of people, information and commodities in a globalized social and economic system. In the future, because of globalization, the spatial reach of local disasters will increase.