Research briefs

According to Prof. Dr Euis Sunarti, the results of a recent study show the importance of families and communities in Indonesia developing resilience to withstand adverse impacts of any disaster. Poor families suffer a higher percentage of loss and their recovery ability is low and long. Natural disaster risk is intimately connected to processes of human development...

A new, geology-based approach has predicted just how susceptible various areas of Auckland are for initial explosive volcanic activity. 'The more information we keep collecting, the better these models ... can inform hazard prevention or control strategies' said Gábor Kereszturi, a PhD student from Massey University’s Institute of Agriculture and Environment...

'At the global scale we're increasingly confident that flood risk will change, because a warming atmosphere means more heavy rain. However, for any individual location the changes to flood risk will depend on each region's rainfall patterns. Under certain circumstances the flood risk may actually decrease,' he says...

While the probabilities of most natural hazards do not change much over time, the sensitivity of the built environment and the vulnerability of the embedded socio-economic fabric have increased rapidly. This science position paper, to be released 14 April, analyses the potential effects of low-probability high-impact events, which the authors argue may bring our already stressed global society beyond the limits of sustainability...

In January, the Global Volcano Model and the International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth’s Interior issued a report on the hazards and risks of eruptions around the world. According to the January report, 90 percent of the volcano risk worldwide is in the five nations of Indonesia, Philippines, Japan, Mexico and Ethiopia...

In the future, in a changing climate, will we be able to continue eating safe vegetables and fruit or will this come under pressure? This is the question asked by the Ghent and Wageningen researchers who have brought together the latest information and scientific findings on the impact of climate change on food safety in a special issue...

According to a new study, the results 'are extremely unfavorable for the continuation of agricultural and water resource management as they are currently practiced in the Great Plains and southwestern United States,' said David Stahle, of the University of Arkansas...

Characterising flood behaviour for any river in the world is now becoming a possibility, according to new research from the University of Bristol. The study, which deals with the difficulty of estimating flooding risk in data-poor areas, finds that it is now possible to make accurate predictions using only remotely sensed data...