Banner
Hazards
- Risk and ImpactThe risk from a natural hazard is determined by the combined understanding of three components:
>hazard: how big and how often?
>exposure: what elements are at risk (people, buildings, infrastructure, agriculture etc.)?
>vulnerability: how does each exposed element respond to the level of hazard? - The concept of hazard in a geographical contextA Hazard is something that is a potential risk to human life or property. A characteristic hazard is an apparent occasion that compromises both life and property.
- Australian Disaster Resilience Knowledge HubThe Knowledge Hub is a national, open-source platform that supports and informs policy, planning, decision making and contemporary good practice in disaster resilience.
- Hazards, Disasters, and RisksAccording to the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), a hazard is a natural process or phenomenon that may pose negative impacts on the economy, society, and ecology, including both natural factors and human factors that are associated with the natural ones.
- What are the different types of plate tectonic boundaries?There are three kinds of plate tectonic boundaries: divergent, convergent, and transform plate boundaries.
- Types of Plate BoundariesThe landscapes of our national parks, as well as geologic hazards such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, are due to the movement of the large plates of Earth’s outer shell.
- HIVHIV is not the same as AIDS. If left untreated, HIV can lead to AIDS. However, with highly effective HIV treatments now available, AIDS is extremely rare in Australia.
- HIV infection and AIDSThe Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is the virus that causes Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The late stage of HIV infection is called AIDS. Not all people with HIV have AIDS.
- BushfireBushfires and grassfires are common throughout Australia. Grassfires are fast moving, passing in five to ten seconds and smouldering for minutes. They have a low to medium intensity and primarily damage crops, livestock and farming infrastructure, such as fences. Bushfires are generally slower moving, but have a higher heat output. This means they pass in two to five minutes, but they can smoulder for days.
- Bushfire overviewBushfires are unpredictable and happen every year. The single biggest killer is indecision. To survive a bushfire you must be prepared to make your own decisions.
- Emergency response tipsCovers tips and links for the following hazard types:
Bushfires, Storms, Cyclones, Floods, Earthquakes, Smoke haze;
Also includes: Health emergencies, Heatwaves, Marine hazards - FloodAustralia has a history of floods, causing devastating human and economic impact.
- FloodFlooding occurs most commonly from heavy rainfall when natural watercourses do not have the capacity to carry excess water. However, floods are not always caused by heavy rainfall.
- Recent Australian droughts may be the worst in 800 yearsAustralia is a continent defined by extremes, and recent decades have seen some extraordinary climate events. But droughts, floods, heatwaves, and fires have battered Australia for millennia. Are recent extreme events really worse than those in the past?
- Historic droughtsAustralia is prone to drought partly because of its geography. Our continent spans the latitudes of the subtropical high pressure belt. This is an area of sinking, dry, stable air and usually clear skies.
- Tropical Cyclone Knowledge CentreFrom the Bureau of Meteorology: includes videos and links
- Australia’s worst cyclones: timelineA look at some of the worst cyclones to lash Australia since 1899.
- Australia’s silent invadersIn the past 250 years, foreign species have been introduced and many are disrupting the established ecosystems that evolution created, with potentially devastating results.
- Invasive species in AustraliaAustralia is home to many plants and animals that have been introduced since European settlement. Some of these have become invasive — they have spread and multiplied to the point where they damage the environment, threaten the continued existence of native plants and animals, or create significant problems for agriculture.
- Attack of the alien invaders: pest plants and animals leave a frightening $1.7 trillion billThey’re one of the most damaging environmental forces on Earth. They’ve colonised pretty much every place humans have set foot on the planet. Yet you might not even know they exist.
- Climate change and healthClimate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity, and health professionals worldwide are already responding to the health harms caused by this unfolding crisis.
- Why deforestation and extinctions make pandemics more likelyResearchers are redoubling efforts to understand links between biodiversity and emerging diseases — and use that information to predict and stop future outbreaks.
- Coronavirus is a wake-up call: our war with the environment is leading to pandemicsThe COVID-19 pandemic sweeping across the world is a crisis of our own making.
That’s the message from infectious disease and environmental health experts, and from those in planetary health – an emerging field connecting human health, civilisation and the natural systems on which they depend.
They might sound unrelated, but the COVID-19 crisis and the climate and biodiversity crises are deeply connected.
Sourced from: Preventing the next pandemic - Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission
- Pandemics: Humans are the culpritsIt’s easy to blame a bat, but is our wanton destruction of nature and the traditional habitats of species responsible for the pandemic gripping the world right now? Experts concur that the loss of biodiversity, mainly because of humans, is directly connected to the spread of deadly diseases like COVID-19.
Books
Click on the icon to search the library online catalogue for books.
You must sign in to Oliver to locate resources
Browse the Collection
Subject | Dewey Number |
Hazards | 363.34 / 910 |
Natural Hazards | 363.35 / 551 / 919.4 |
Ecological Hazards | 363.37 |
Pandemics | 614.4 / 616.90994 |
Animal and Plant Invasions | 632.60994 |