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| Megadisasters: The Science of Predicting the Next Catastrophe
ISBN: 9781400833443
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Princeton University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Natural disasters -- Forecasting;
Author and mathematics professor Diacu (Celestial Encounters: The Origins of Chaos and Stability) presents a civilian-friendly guide to methods, like numerical modeling, used to understand, quantify, and possibly predict disasters. Written simply but without being simplistic, Diacu's text is driven by enthusiasm for his field and its potential for solving some of humanity's big problems. In nine chapters, Diacu examines natural disasters-volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, hurricanes and typhoons, tsunamis and floods-but also takes time to examine human-driven disasters: financial collapse, pandemic disease, and climate change. Diacu chronicles the history of each field of prediction clearly and concisely, illustrating how developments in mathematics drove developments in geology, and vice-versa, as well as the unpredictable variables as dictated by "the monkey in the machine," chaos theory. A chapter on climate change is particularly insightful and important. Few non-scientists understand how climate models work, but it would dispel a lot of skepticism if they did; Diacu manages it in just seven pages, in language anyone can understand. (Jan.) Copyright 2009 Reed Business Information.
Florin Diacu is professor of mathematics and former director of the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences at the University of Victoria in Canada. He is the coauthor of Celestial Encounters: The Origins of Chaos and Stability and the coeditor of Classical and Celestial Mechanics: The Recife Lectures (both Princeton). |
