الصفحة 1
الصفحة 1
International Perspectives on Natural Disasters : Occurrence, Mitigation, and Consequences
Reports of natural disasters fill the media with regularity. Places in the world are affected by natural disaster events every day. Such events include earthquakes, cyclones, tsunamis, wildfires – the list could go on for considerable length. In the 1990s there was a concentrated focus on natural disaster information and mitigation during the International Decade for Natural Disasters Reduction (IDNDR). The information was technical and provided the basis for major initiatives in building structures designed for seismic safety, slope stability, severe storm warning systems, and global monitoring and reporting. Mitigation, or planning in the event that natural hazards prevalent in a region would suddenly become natural disasters, was a major goal of the decade-long program. During the IDNDR, this book was conceptualized, and planning for its completion began.
Extreme Weather Events and Public Health Responses
In February 2004, the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the European Environment Agency organized an expert meeting to exchange information and develop recommendations on public health and environmental responses to weather and climate extremes, floods, heat-waves and cold spells. The meeting was kindly hosted by the Ministry of Health of Slovakia. The meeting recommendations were adopted at the Fourth Ministerial Conference on Environment and Health, Budapest, Hungary, 2004.
