Every year several catastrophic natural hazards strike somewhere on Earth. These may cause thousands of lives, cause damages of billions of dollars, destroy natural landmarks, cause tsunamis, floods, landslides, and at worst even trigger an economic depression that might affect directly or indirectly the entire world, render a large territory uninhabitable or destabilize the military and political balance in a region. Most of these events are caused by nature but their potential catastrophic consequences are tied to overcrowding and the emergence of megacities; the proliferation of nuclear power plants and nuclear waste storage facilities; and the existence of high dams, and other facilities whose destruction pose an unacceptable risk of global reach. Thus the study of natural hazards and of the processes that govern their occurrences has become a fundamental challenge for the survival of our civilization.

The course will focus on the governing dynamics for different hazards, including but not limited to earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, severe weather and cyclones, increasingly harmful dust storms, floods, droughts, and at local scales avalanches and landfalls. The course will concentrate on observing, tracking and even forecasting such events using primarily satellite based observations. These can be used to monitor the Earth’s surface and atmosphere to give early warning information about impending hazards and information for risk management and disaster relief.