Free VCE Year 11 Geography Flashcard Review

Geological (earthquake, landslide, coastal erosion); hydro-meteorological (flood, drought, bushfire, cyclone); biological (infectious disease, cane toad invasion); technological (oil spill, radiation leak, flooding caused by land clearing).

A hazard triggered by another hazard, such as a landslide after heavy rainfall. Flooding can also contribute to disease outbreaks through contaminated water or mosquito breeding, but transmission requires the relevant pathogens and exposure.

For the same hazard measure and location, exceeding a larger magnitude threshold cannot be more frequent than exceeding a smaller threshold. Many hazards have frequent small events and rarer large events, but there is no universal inverse formula; estimate the relationship from relevant data.

In any single year there is a 1-in-100 chance of a flood at least that large; it is a probability that applies every year, not an event that occurs once a century.

For a complete annual-maximum series, a simple Weibull estimate is T = (n + 1) ÷ m: n is the number of annual maxima and m ranks them from largest (1) downwards. The estimated AEP is m ÷ (n + 1). This plotting-position estimate is not a full fitted flood-frequency analysis.

Floods can deposit sediment and nutrients, replenish wetlands and groundwater and support fish breeding. Fire can stimulate regeneration of fire-adapted plants, depending on species and fire regime. Volcanic ash can develop into productive soil, depending on weathering and nutrient availability.

Economic, social, political, environmental and cultural factors; risk rises with the hazard, exposure and vulnerability and falls with the capacity of people and places to cope.

A potential impact is what could occur in a possible event, usually modelled (for example a 1% AEP flood footprint); a realised impact is what was actually observed after an event.

State its strength (strong, moderate or weak) from how closely two distributions coincide, support it with data, then explain the interconnection; association alone does not prove causation.

Remote sensing helps map extent and assess damage; GNSS locates field observations; GIS combines hazard, building and population layers to estimate exposure and prioritise checks. An overlay alone does not confirm damage to each dwelling or identify every household’s vulnerability.

Definition of topic; primary sources and techniques; secondary sources and techniques; presentation of processed data; analysis; conclusion; evaluation; referencing.

Border, orientation, legend, title, scale and source; a GIS map of fieldwork data also credits the source of every layer.

A hazard is a process or condition with the potential to cause harm; a hazard event is the realisation of that potential at a time and place; a disaster is a hazard event whose impacts seriously disrupt community functioning and cause human, material, economic or environmental losses.

Hazard, exposure, vulnerability and capacity interact to shape disaster risk. For otherwise comparable conditions, greater exposure or susceptibility can increase losses, while effective capacity can reduce them. These are interacting factors, not a universal arithmetic formula or a guarantee of a particular event’s outcome.

Prediction of risk and vulnerability; planning protection and mitigation; recovery and reconstruction. For riverine floods, link forecasting to planning controls and post-flood recovery support. For cane toads, distinguish surveillance and containment from the still-unavailable broad-scale eradication of the invasion. These response categories overlap; not every hazard has the same reconstruction needs.

Structural: physically constructing a building with appropriate bushfire-resistant features. Non-structural: planning provisions such as the Bushfire Management Overlay, building codes or community education. The code is a rule; construction to meet it is a physical measure.

Economic (funding for warning networks), social (drills and past experience), political (inquiry-informed planning reform), environmental (terrain and speed of onset) and cultural (attitudes to risk and Traditional Owner-led cultural burning).

Overlaying hazard and human-activity layers can identify exposed places and inform planning controls, access assessment, warnings and fuel-management priorities. Decisions also require vulnerability, capacity, site conditions, data quality and feasibility; overlap alone does not determine every site’s risk or priority.

Examples include revised fire-danger ratings with Code Red for summer 2009–10; the Emergency Alert telephone warning system from 2009; Neighbourhood Safer Places documented by CFA in 2010; Bushfire Management Overlay provisions from November 2011; and the shift to a risk-reduction fuel-management target in 2016–17. Any three are acceptable. These occurred at different times; their introduction does not by itself demonstrate effectiveness.

The UN disaster-risk-reduction framework for 2015–2030. States have the primary implementation role, shared with other stakeholders. UNDRR supports implementation, follow-up and review and coordinates disaster risk reduction within the UN system. Its four priorities concern understanding risk, risk governance, resilience investment, and preparedness for effective response and safer recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction ('Build Back Better').