AQA A-level Hazards Knowledge Booklet
Fundamental Concepts
1. Hazard Perception:
a. Wealth → HICs and wealthier people are often less vulnerable BUT their possible
losses are greater
b. Experience → previous experience can cause people to think it won’t occur again OR
they could be fatalistic
c. Education → hazards will be perceived differently based on a person’s knowledge of
the risks
d. Religion/Beliefs → many people believe hazards are God’s will → they are fatalistic
2. Response Types:
a. Fatalism → the view that hazards are uncontrollable → accepting of fate
b. Adaptation → changing lifestyle practices to reduce vulnerability and live around the
hazard
c. Prediction (e.g seismic monitoring)
d. Mitigation (preparedness) → strategies to reduce the impacts (eg. sandbags for
flooding, evacuation etc.)
e. Prevention → strategies to reduce the change of a hazard (eg. controlled burning to
prevent large wildfires)
3. Hazard Models:
a. The Park Model
Benefits:
- It considers time frame
- It is visual
- It considers the QofL and compares it to the normal QofL
- Detailed step by step displays a recovery progress
- It can easily be adapted to different hazards
Limits:
- Linear which is unrepresentative of reality (it ignores secondary hazards)
- It doesn’t consider the severity of the hazard when determining the
neccessary recovery time
b. Hazard Management Cycle
Benefits:
- Cyclical which is representative of hazard reality
, - T he before and after stages act as a guide to help structure management
efforts
Limits:
- V ariable effectiveness
- It’s oversimplified
Landforms at Plate Margins
onstructive (divergent) - plates move apart or diverge
C
Destructive (convergent) - plates move together or converge
Collision - destructive margin with two continental plates
Conservative (transform) - plates sliding past each other
1. Constructive Plate Margins:
A) Ocean Ridge eg. Mid-Atlantic Ridge
B) Rift Valley eg. East African Rift Valley
2. Destructive Plate Margins:
A) Deep Sea Trenches eg. Mariana Trench
) Island Arcs eg. Japan
B
C) Volcanoes (see diagrams above)
Fundamental Concepts
1. Hazard Perception:
a. Wealth → HICs and wealthier people are often less vulnerable BUT their possible
losses are greater
b. Experience → previous experience can cause people to think it won’t occur again OR
they could be fatalistic
c. Education → hazards will be perceived differently based on a person’s knowledge of
the risks
d. Religion/Beliefs → many people believe hazards are God’s will → they are fatalistic
2. Response Types:
a. Fatalism → the view that hazards are uncontrollable → accepting of fate
b. Adaptation → changing lifestyle practices to reduce vulnerability and live around the
hazard
c. Prediction (e.g seismic monitoring)
d. Mitigation (preparedness) → strategies to reduce the impacts (eg. sandbags for
flooding, evacuation etc.)
e. Prevention → strategies to reduce the change of a hazard (eg. controlled burning to
prevent large wildfires)
3. Hazard Models:
a. The Park Model
Benefits:
- It considers time frame
- It is visual
- It considers the QofL and compares it to the normal QofL
- Detailed step by step displays a recovery progress
- It can easily be adapted to different hazards
Limits:
- Linear which is unrepresentative of reality (it ignores secondary hazards)
- It doesn’t consider the severity of the hazard when determining the
neccessary recovery time
b. Hazard Management Cycle
Benefits:
- Cyclical which is representative of hazard reality
, - T he before and after stages act as a guide to help structure management
efforts
Limits:
- V ariable effectiveness
- It’s oversimplified
Landforms at Plate Margins
onstructive (divergent) - plates move apart or diverge
C
Destructive (convergent) - plates move together or converge
Collision - destructive margin with two continental plates
Conservative (transform) - plates sliding past each other
1. Constructive Plate Margins:
A) Ocean Ridge eg. Mid-Atlantic Ridge
B) Rift Valley eg. East African Rift Valley
2. Destructive Plate Margins:
A) Deep Sea Trenches eg. Mariana Trench
) Island Arcs eg. Japan
B
C) Volcanoes (see diagrams above)
