Reduction of urban hazards

摘要

TWICE this century, large towns have been laid waste in minutes by volcanic eruptions. The fifty thousand resulting deaths in St Pierre, Martinique, and Armero, Colombia, account for over two-thirds of volcano-related deaths since 1900, and give an indication of the potent volcanic threat to the world's increasingly urbanized population. Within the next five years, half of the world's people and 70-90 per cent of those in middle- to high-income economies will live in towns and cities'. Of these, at least 500 million will be living under the shadow of a volcano. So this, the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, is an appropriate time to assess what can --or should --be done to reduce the hazard posed by volcanoes to densely populatedregions.