Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
Introduction
The burial of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the AD 79 eruption of Vesuvius, the devastation produced by the tsunami generated during the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 and the city of St Pierre laid waste by Mount Pelée's ‘nuées ardentes’ are but a few awesome examples of disasters caused by powerful volcanic eruptions. Since AD 1783 eruption-related deaths have totalled 220,000 (Tanguy et al., 1998). Most resulted from post-eruption famine and epidemic disease (30%), pyroclastic flows and surges (27%), lahars (17%) and volcanogenic tsunamis (17%). Volcanic fatalities are small compared to those of floods and earthquakes but the potential threat from a massive eruption is greater today than ever before, because of the large concentrations of populations living around volcanoes. More than 500 million people live in active volcanic areas (Tilling, 2005) and at least 200 million now live in cities within 200 km of an active or potentially active volcano (Chester et al., 2001). A volcanic eruption of ‘modest’ size (VEI 3), such as the Nevado del Ruiz event in 1985, results in about 7.7 billion US$ in loss. This figure may look small when compared to the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake in Japan but the modest 1985 eruption affected an estimated 20% of Colombia's domestic growth.
The sense of volcanic risk can be defined by Fournier d'Albe's qualitative ‘risk equation’ (1979): volcanic risk = hazard × vulnerability × value.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.