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Geohazards: Coastal Disasters

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Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series ((EESS))

Definition

We define the term “hazard” as a potential source of harm, where “harm” is defined as the “injury or damage to the health of people, or damage to property or the environment” following the definition as given by ISO/IEC (2014). The term “risk” is defined as a “combination of the probability of occurrence of harm and the severity of that harm” (ISO/IEC, 2014). Furthermore, the term “risk” may be expressed as a function of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. A geohazard is a geological state that may lead to widespread damage presenting severe threats to humans, property, and the natural and built environment. A coastal geohazard is a natural physical phenomenon usually associated with seacoasts but to a limited extent also along lakeshores, where the initiating process of the disaster may originate at great distances from the point of impact.

Introduction

There are numerous geohazards which affect coastal regions, including beach erosion, landslide/cliff collapse, wave...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geosciences and Geography, RWTH Aachen University, Lochnerstr. 4-20, 52056, Aachen, Germany

    Gösta Hoffmann & Klaus Reicherter

Authors
  1. Gösta Hoffmann
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  2. Klaus Reicherter
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gösta Hoffmann .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Szczecin, Szczecin, Poland

    Jan Harff

  2. University of Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany

    Martin Meschede

  3. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, Kiel, Germany

    Sven Petersen

  4. Institute of Earth Science, KĂ–PPEN-Laboratory, Saint Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia

    JĂ–rn Thiede

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Hoffmann, G., Reicherter, K. (2016). Geohazards: Coastal Disasters. In: Harff, J., Meschede, M., Petersen, S., Thiede, J. (eds) Encyclopedia of Marine Geosciences. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6238-1_169

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