Tech Helps Insurers Assess Global Disasters
Despite taking up to 100,000 lives a year and causing economic losses sometimes in excess of $100 billion annually, natural disasters have a relatively small impact on society when compared with war, civil strife and famine.
Unfortunately, this is a situation that is unlikely to persist without end. Our civilization has developed against a background of geological and climatic calm that has permitted us to make sure and steady progress toward todays global technology-based society. The 10,000 years or so during which nature has left us in peace should not, however, be viewed as the norm.
Broader examination of the history of our planet will show that this period is better considered as a window of tranquility that will, at some point in the future, be closed. The 4.6 billion-year history of the Earth has been characterized by countless numbers of global catastrophes, from asteroid and comet impacts to volcanic super-eruptions, giant sea waves and abrupt climate flips, all of whichif they occurred todaywould have major impacts on global society.
The big question we have to face is not whether these global geophysical events, or GGEs ("gee-gees") will happen again, but whether we can do anything to avoid, mitigate or manage their potentially devastating effects. Broadly speaking the answer is yes, but with the provisos. First, we must have some advance notice of the threat; and secondly, we need to summon up the political will.
Inevitably, science and technology will play a role in tackling these enormous natural threats, but other measuresperhaps involving temporary curtailment of traditional civil libertiesmay be required in the event of worst-case scenarios being realized.
Certainly the most popularized of all global hazards are the asteroid or comet impacts, dramatically presented in the Hollywood blockbusters "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon." Although infrequent, the impact threat is a real one, with objects of 1 kilometer or more estimated to strike the Earth every 100,000-to-600,000 years. Such a collision would obliterate an area the size of California and pump sufficient dust into the stratosphere to trigger severe global cooling and the resulting deaths through starvation of perhaps a billion people.
Technology is already being brought to bear, however, to counter the threat. Since the late 1990s, a number of specialized sky surveys such as Spacewatch and NEAT (Near Earth Asteroid Tracking) have been working to spot asteroids with the potential to collide with the Earthclocking up a total of 2,653 so far, including 693 objects a kilometer or more across (as of Feb. 1, 2004). NASAs Near Earth Object Program has the goal of identifying 90 percent of all large Earth-threatening asteroids by 2008, mapping their orbits thousands of years into the future and pinpointing the timing of any threatening encounters.
Just in case an asteroid with our name on it is spotted, the NASA Comet/Asteroid Protection System (CAPS) is charged with finding out the best way of diverting any objects that look to be heading our way. The various methods being studied to mitigate the impact threat involve orbital modification or deflection rather than blasting the object to bits. This latter course of action would not prevent collision but would transform a rifle-bullet impact into one more akin to a shotgun blast.
CAPS studies envisage using high-powered pulsed lasers to make slight orbital adjustments to threatening objects and even, where necessary, to send small asteroids crashing into larger objects that may be on a collision course with our planet.
The threat of global catastrophe comes from beneath our feet as well as from over our heads, and the gigantic volcanic events known as super-eruptions have the potential to be just as devastating as a 1km asteroid impact. They are also far more frequent, occurring, on average, about every 50 millennia over the past two million years.
The greatest super-eruptions are perhaps 5,000 times bigger than the 1980 Mount St. Helens blast, ejecting vast quantities of ash and gas into the atmosphere that leads rapidly to severe global cooling. As for large impact events, the legacy is likely to be mass starvation and death tolls approaching a billion.
Once again, however, scientists and technologists are doing their best to ensure that we are not caught unawares. It is likely that decades will be required for sufficient magma to accumulate to feed a super-eruption, with increasing numbers of earthquakes and major swelling of the ground surface accompanying magma accumulation. Both phenomena can be detected and tracked using the new technologies now available to volcanologists, allowing governments across the world a respite during which rationing, enhancement of energy provision and other measures can be put in place.
Once again, the contribution of space technology will be vital, with the Global Positioning System and Europes new Galileo Positioning System (operational from 2008) allowing detection of ground surface swelling on a millimetric scale. Even more powerful is the satellite radar interferometry method, which enables a detailed picture of deformation to be constructed across an entire volcano, allowing estimates of the size and depth of the accumulating magma body to be constrained.
Far more frequent than both large impact events and volcanic super-eruptions are the collapses of ocean island volcanoes, generating giant tsunami (sea waves) over 100 meters high that are capable of devastating an entire ocean basin. Although research is continuing, it seems that such immense volcanic landslides may occur every 10,000 years or thereabouts.
Collapsing ocean island volcanoes and the huge waves they generate may be a little more difficult to deal with. During an eruption in 1949, the entire western flank of the Cumbre Vieja volcano on the Canary Island of La Palma dropped seaward by 4 meters and stopped. This huge mass of rock is now poised to crash into the North Atlantic during a future eruption. Computer modeling has shown that when this happens, a series of giant tsunami will devastate the entire North Atlantic rim, including all the coastal cities on the eastern seaboard of North America.
Technology currently has no way of preventing such an event, which may happen next year or thousands of years down the line. While monitoring of the unstable mass using GPS and radar interferometry may provide advance warning of collapse, allowing pre-evacuation and the saving of tens of millions of lives, material damage would still be immense, costing many trillions of dollars.
Looking ahead, however, a number of enthusiasts have advocated the use of nanotechnology to tackle the problem, with nano-tube-reinforced curtains forming artificial shorelines capable of dissipating much of the wave energy. Whether serious science or future fantasy, it seems that technology might even have an answer for this most devastating of threats.
There is no doubt that Mother Nature is certain to turn nasty in a big way at some time in our future. We have good reasons to be optimistic, however, that when the time comes, we will have the means to go at least some of the way toward taming the worst of her fury.
Bill McGuire is Benfield Professor of Geophysical Hazards and director of the Benfield Hazard Research Centre at University College, London. His book, "A Guide to the End of the World: Everything You Never Wanted to Know," is published by Oxford University Press.
Reproduced from National Underwriter Property & Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, February 20, 2004. Copyright 2004 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved. Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.
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