Prediction, monitoring and forecasting; the hazard management cycle and the Park model; mitigation, building design and planning; and the contrast between developed and developing responses.

What this dot point is asking

Eduqas wants you to explain how tectonic hazards are predicted, monitored and forecast, describe the hazard management cycle and the Park model, explain mitigation through building design and planning, and evaluate the contrast between developed and developing responses.

The answer

Prediction, monitoring and forecasting

Volcanic eruptions are usually preceded by warning signs: increased seismic activity (magma moving), ground deformation (swelling as magma rises), changes in gas emissions (rising sulphur dioxide) and rising temperatures. These are detected by seismometers, tiltmeters and GPS, gas spectrometers and satellite thermal imaging, allowing forecasting and timely evacuation, as before Pinatubo. Earthquakes are far harder to predict: there is no reliable short-term warning, so management focuses on forecasting long-term probability (from past activity) and on earthquake early-warning systems that detect the first waves and give seconds of warning before the strongest shaking arrives.

The management cycle and the Park model

These frameworks structure evaluation. The management cycle shows that effective management acts before, during and after an event, not just in the emergency. The Park (disaster response) model plots quality of life against time across three phases, relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction, and the shape of the curve (how deep the dip and how fast and high the recovery) reveals a place's resilience: a well-resourced, well-governed country recovers quickly and may "build back better", while a poorer, weakly governed one recovers slowly and may not return to its former level.

Mitigation, building design and the development contrast

Mitigation reduces impact in advance. For earthquakes, aseismic building design (flexible frames, base isolation, cross-bracing, counterweights) keeps buildings standing, and land-use planning keeps development off the highest-risk ground. For volcanoes, hazard mapping and exclusion zones keep people away from likely flow paths. Preparedness, education, drills and warning systems, saves lives during the event. The development contrast is central: high-income countries can afford engineering, monitoring and rapid, organised response, so they suffer fewer deaths; lower-income countries depend more on preparedness, community action and international aid, and recover more slowly. Eduqas expects the judgement that management reduces but cannot eliminate risk, that the best mix is context-dependent, and that secondary hazards and governance shape whether even good strategies succeed.

Examples in context

Example 1. Mount Pinatubo, Philippines (1991), monitoring and evacuation. Successful monitoring of Pinatubo, rising seismicity, ground deformation and gas, allowed scientists to forecast the eruption and evacuate tens of thousands of people from the danger zone before the VEI 6 eruption, saving an estimated thousands of lives. It is the textbook Eduqas example of prediction and preparedness working for a volcano, while the lahars that continued for years afterwards show that even successful management cannot remove the longer-term secondary hazard, supporting a balanced evaluation.

Example 2. Japan's aseismic engineering and early warning. Japan, a wealthy, high-risk, well-governed country, invests heavily in mitigation and preparedness: strict aseismic building codes (base isolation, flexible frames), regular earthquake drills, and a nationwide early-warning system that gives seconds of notice before strong shaking. In the 2011 Tohoku earthquake these measures meant the powerful shaking caused relatively few deaths, demonstrating effective earthquake management; yet the tsunami overwhelmed sea walls and caused most of the deaths, showing the limits of management against secondary hazards. Japan is the standard Eduqas case for the developed-country approach and its limits.

Try this

Q1. Name the four stages of the hazard management cycle. [2 marks]

• Cue. Mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery.

Q2. Explain why volcanoes are easier to manage than earthquakes. [3 marks]

• Cue. Volcanoes give detectable warning signs (seismicity, ground deformation, gas) that monitoring can use to forecast eruptions and evacuate in advance, whereas earthquakes give no reliable short-term warning, so earthquake management must rely on mitigation built beforehand.