Safety and Reliability of Industrial Products, Systems and Structures

This paper presents a review of the state-of-the-art to identify emerging ideas and solutions which hold promise for practical implementation in risk management strategies of natural hazards with focus on landslides and extreme waves. methods. For other natural hazards, 15 in total, similar lines are outlined. Interesting is that the authors already present methods of estimating research results within an evaluation framework, including economic efficiency, trade-offs and values. Bryant (1991) gives a complete overview on natural hazards, as well as its social impacts. Apart from how natural hazards occur, the author also presents (controversial) methods how to predict hazards from occurring again (on short and long term). The author claims that there is sound scientific evidence that cosmic/planetary links exist with the occurrence of earthquakes and floods. The 11-year sunspot cycle and the 18.6-year lunar cycle (caused by the moon’s orbit fluctuation) are used to show a correlation with the ENSO index, occurrences of floods and droughts in North America, Northern China, Australia, Patagonia, amongst others. Very surprising Bryant (1991) shows that in some parts of the world (such as the Mediterranean) the sunspot frequency and the seismic activity are correlated, via fluctuations in the Earth’s rotation (in the order of milliseconds). However, if earthquake occurrence is dominated by some force external to the Earth (as mentioned by the author), then one would expect clustering to be taking place at the same time worldwide, which is not supported by the data. Cannon et al. (1994) claim that natural disasters are not only caused by the natural environment, but also (or maybe even more) by the social, political and economic environment. This is shown throughout their work when they concentrate on