Dave provides a brief review of some data released by Munich Re yesterday on losses from natural disasters in 2011 to date. Already the year is the most expensive on record for natural catastrophes!

Dave highlights two videos of riverbank collapse events in action.

A collection of interesting links to articles and sources of information related to natural hazards:

The latest in the series of posts on the depiction of landslides in various types of art; this time, the topic is a paintging by Charles Emilius Gold showing a seismically-triggered landslides near to Wellington in New Zealand.

Given that natural hazards are at the forefront of the news at the moment, I thought it would be good to highlight three important forthcoming conferences at which we will learn a great deal more about recent and potential events: 1. European Geosciences Union General Assembly 2011 Next week is the annual EGU meeting in Vienna.  This will be the largest natural hazards meeting of the year, at which there …

A first report of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan today

Images and commentary of the extraordinary landslide in a coal pit at Collolar in Turkey in February

A short post proving a video of the aftermath of the turkish open cast mine accident, and a link to a CNN video on the work Of Anne Hallum

In the UK, the media reports on the landfall of Cyclone Yasi have mostly focused on the impacts not being as serious as had been feared.  This is the case only because the storm cams ashore away from the large urban centres.  In the communities directly in the path of the cyclone the impact has been dreadful, although fortunately with only a single life lost so far.  ABC News has …

Unfortunately, my bizarre track record for promoting disaster wherever I go is once again coming to fruition.  Two days before I fly to Australia, the north-east coast of that country is about to be struck by a category 5 (the strongest type) cyclone, named Cyclone Yasi.  The Australian Bureau of Meteorology has a map of the likely landfall zone: Unfortunately, the impact of this event is likely to be severe.  …