Assess the usefulness of theoretical frameworks in understanding the prediction, impact

and management of tectonic hazards.

Theoretical frameworks can be used to understand the prediction, impact and management
of tectonic hazards and also help countries to manage and prepare for future hazards. A
prediction is a statement about what people think will happen in the future. An impact is a
strong effect or influence that something has on a situation or person. Management is the
process of planning and organising the resources and activities of a business to achieve
specific goals in the most effective manner possible. The hazard management cycle looks at
4 main stages, preparedness, response, recovery and mitigation. It is an example of a
framework that is used by the government and other organisations, e.g., businesses and
charities to protect people from natural hazards. It aims to reduce the loss of life and
property destruction while ensuring a rapid and effective recovery. However, they alone are
not always too useful.

The hazard management cycle also shows how the choice of response depends on human
and physical factors linked together. One way that this is useful is that each of the stages
interlinks with each other in some way which means that if one of the stages is done
efficiently and proven effective, such as making sure that risk assessments are done during
the mitigation phase, this then means that the response and emergency management will
be done better as they have a better framework to work from and have a clear idea of what
may happen and the areas to concentrate in. Furthermore, by looking at the recovery stage
in terms of both the short and long term such as temporary and permanent buildings it
means that the countries are also further prepared and therefore most likely much less
vulnerable to future events and hazards which may occur. Mitigation then further links into
this, further helping to reduce vulnerability to the hazards such as enforcing building codes
whilst the reconstruction occurs. An example of mitigation in this framework is in Heimaey
in Iceland in 1973 when they sprayed seawater to cool and solidify the lava flow which
reduced the impact of the eruption. This helped limit the impact of the tectonic hazard.

Additionally, by involving international players, not just local government and local charities,
it helps further as it means that if a disaster strikes there may be more of a positive impact
than what would normally be expected as the country would be gaining more help from a
large number of professionals, for example, in the Japan earthquake, there was a quick
response from both international players and locally, with well-trained fire rescue teams
and highly skilled medical teams coming soon after the hazard hit coupled with 110 000
defence troops which severely helped limit the disastrous impacts of the earthquake itself.
This, therefore, shows how extremely useful the hazard management cycle framework can
be in aiding countries and governments to prepare and manage hazard events.

In contrast, the fact whether a theoretical framework such as the hazard management cycle
is useful or not mostly depends on the willingness of the key players to cooperate. For
instance, mitigation requires a stable and strict government to ensure that building codes
etc. are enforced and appropriate preparation such as creating sufficient preparedness
plans. This could further mean that this, therefore, depends on the level of development of
the country and also the available and accessible resources, for example, in the Haiti 2010
earthquake it is very unlikely that the process of mitigation or the hazard management cycle
actually occurred as Haiti have a very corrupt government that can be easily swayed by
bribery, let alone taking into account that the country didn’t have the resources and income
to be able to deal with the problems anyway. However, it could be argued that this kind of
framework could be useful for developing countries like Haiti in the future, although this
entirely depends on the players.

The Park’s disaster response curve model is also seen to be very useful in understanding the
prediction, impact and management of tectonic hazards that focuses on how a country may
respond and recover from a disaster, often looking at areas with contrasting levels of
development. The model can be used in showing why things such as reconstruction and
rehabilitation may have taken place at different rates for different countries, therefore
allowing players such as governments to understand how things could have been different
and so how to prepare better in the future. For instance, countries like Haiti will likely have a
much longer curve to reach reconstruction compared to a wealthier country such as Japan
based on things such as the level of development and government corruption which obstructs
its need to reduce the vulnerability of the country. Therefore, unlike the hazard management
cycle, Park’s disaster curve helps show in detail the differences in recovery between the
different tectonic hazard events in both physical and human factors. However, it doesn’t go
properly into detail to show how the countries actually act and prepare/manage for future
events better, instead they just focus on the time it took.

Furthermore, Park’s model just assumes that all areas of a country recover at the same rate,
which is completely wrong for example in the 2013 Philippines typhoon, the larger more
populous and money-generating urban cities such as Tacloban received much faster aid than
the smaller, more densely populated rural areas which had made citizens themselves have to
try and help and rescue people for several days, increasing the death toll and total damage
significantly. This shows that the speed of response overall is much faster in urban areas of a
country and would be able to reach stage 5 in the model much more quickly than the rural
places, this then, therefore, shows that one curve which is normally used for Park’s model
may not be sufficient and an overall accurate representation of the speed of total recovery
and response, this shows that this theoretical framework isn’t always useful in understanding
the impact and management of tectonic hazards.

Some disasters are extremely catastrophic in terms of their impact, for example, the 2010
Haiti earthquake as its magnitude (7.0) was reasonably low compared to other catastrophic
earthquakes, but 160 000 people died, compared to Japan’s 9.0 with 15 900 deaths. The
Pressure and Release Model (PAR) is used to illustrate the vulnerability of people and the
impact and severity of the event, it was created to understand the vulnerability of disasters.
In addition, the model distinguishes between three components: root causes, dynamic
pressures and unsafe conditions. This is very helpful to understand the prediction, impact
and management of tectonic hazards as it considers many factors such as how vulnerable a
country is and the economic pressures which therefore makes it more accurate, and it can
specify which area is getting affected the most and needs the most aid if disaster strikes.
However, a disadvantage of the PAR model is that there are no statistics, so it is hard to
compare, making it less useful on a quantitative scale.

To conclude, theoretical frameworks can be useful in understanding the prediction, impact

and management of tectonic hazards, specifically in management. Although, it is extremely
difficult to predict most tectonic hazards, especially when discussing the extent of what
their effects may be, which means that frameworks may be useful as a guide but to solely
depend on that wouldn’t be the best thing to do as it may not always be the most accurate.