which have changed very little in three decades. Despite the recent rise ofsupra-
nationalismin Europe, those who have declared that the nation-state is “dead”
appear to be premature. Indeed, the world’s newest nation-state, Kosovo, is located
in Europe, and the advocates of a “Euro” identity that supersedes the national
identities of European nation-states appear to have met with very little success.
The nation-state continues to be a viable means of dividing political space.
Natural Hazards
A type of event, triggered by forces in nature, that has the potential to cause sig-
nificant loss of life, damage to property, and other natural hazards. To be consid-
ered a “natural hazard” the event cannot be caused by human activity or
negligence, i.e., a fire caused by a burning cigarette in an apartment building has
the potential to cause multiple deaths, but it is not a natural hazard because the fire
is the result of human carelessness and is preventable. On the other hand, a similar
fire caused by a lightning strike would be considered the result of a natural hazard.
Natural hazards are generally not preventable, and in some cases cannot even be
predicted with any level of accuracy, a characteristic that makes preparation for
and response to this class of hazards particularly difficult. If a natural hazard
results in an event that causes significant loss of life and/or property damage, the
event is termed anatural disaster. In the United States, relief from the damage
resulting from natural hazards is addressed initially by local and state agencies,
but if the consequences of the event are severe enough to warrant additional assis-
tance, the governor of a state may request federal disaster relief by declaring a spe-
cificlocationor group of locations (usually cities or counties) “disaster areas” and
requesting assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The financial losses and cost in lives of natural hazards can be enormous, with a
single significant event resulting in billions of dollars of damage and thousands
of deaths. Geographers have become increasingly interested in recent years in
the study of natural hazards, especially in thelocational analysisof the patterns
associated with the occurrence of hazards, and in the spatial aspects of response
to such events.
Hazards may be classified according to the forces that trigger the event. These
forces may be geological, climatological, and hydrological. Diseases may also
be considered to be natural hazards and are considered as a separate category.
Extremely rare events, which may indeed be the cause of massive death and
destruction, are not typically considered by scholars and policymakers studying
natural hazards, simply because such events happen so infrequently that they are
Natural Hazards 237