How can science be used to prevent natural hazards from becoming major disasters?
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia. — Building on an initiative launched last year, the International Council for Science (ICSU) today held its first conference on environmental hazards and disasters. The conference, which took place in conjunction with the official inauguration of ICSU’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, addressed how science could be used to prevent natural and human-induced hazards from becoming catastrophic events. UNESCO, through its Regional Office for Science in Jakarta, and the Academy of Sciences of Malaysia co-sponsored the conference. The number of recorded natural disasters has increased dramatically in recent times, from about 100 per decade in 1940 to nearly 2800 per decade in the 1990s. Unfortunately, the Asia-Pacific region is no stranger to such events — an example being the Indian Ocean tsunami, which happened at the end of 2004. Other examples of recent disasters include the hurricanes Katrina and Wilma, an earthquake in Kashmir and landslides in the P
