About this site

This site is intended become a collection of web hosted, interactive facilities about natural hazards encountered in and around the Vancouver, BC, lower mainland, in the region within a day-trip from here, and more widely across Canada and around the globe.What’s with the little browser-tab icon? The full image is here: it represents the six natural hazard types we emphasize: landslides or rockfall, earthquakes, volcanoes, waves and tsunami, hurricanes, tornadoes and storms. Extinctions and impacts are not included, but they should be – stay tuned!

Others NOT emphasized in our course include fires, floods, snow or ice storms and human-caused events of any kind.

Resources delivered in 2017 and 2018 will have been funded by a TLEF grant, with Sara Harris as PI and Francis Jones as principle author.

A blog space rather than a custom website has been chosen so future instructors, administrators and students can continue to improve these resources. Future posts will outline frameworks in use for creating these facilities. For example, any naturally occurring, potentially hazardous phenomenon or event can be studied in terms of any or all of these five aspects:

  1. Process underlying the phenomenon – or “how and why it works”.
  2. Forecasting or predicting timing, location and severity; current capabilities and limitations.
  3. Consequences: what the impact of the event or phenomenon will be on people, property or the environment.
  4. Mitigation, or how we can both minimize eventual consequences, and recover efficiently after the event.
  5. Inspiration – how learning about any of these phenomena can increase you knowledge of and appreciation for our wondrous planet.

For comments or suggestions please contact Francis Jones at fjones@eoas.ubc.ca. At least until late 2018 … After that someone else may be in charge.