Chair, IGU Commission on Hazards and Risks

Susan L. Cutter, Director, Hazards & Vulnerability and Research Institute

Chair, IGU Commission on Hazards and Risks

Department of Geography, University of South Carolina

Columbia, SC 29208 USA

Dear Colleagues,

At the request of the IGU Executive Committee, I have agreed to assume the role of theme leader for contributions by geographers to the “International Year of Planet Earth” (IYPE) on the topic of Hazards. I do so as Chair of the IGU Commission on Hazards and Risks as well as a member of the IYPE Hazards Science Implementation Team and the GeoUnions Hazards Team.

The IYPE Hazards Science Team and the GeoUnions Hazards team produced the Hazards theme brochure ( where four key research questions were identified. The first two, reproduced below, are most amenable for Geography. An additional four questions are posed.

• How have humans altered the geosphere, biosphere, and the landscape, thereby creating long-term changes detrimental to life and the environment and triggering and amplifying certain hazards?
• What technologies and methodologies are required to assess the vulnerability of people and places to hazards and how might these be used at a variety of spatial scales?

1) What are the driving forces that increase or decrease vulnerability to hazards and how do these manifest themselves at various spatial scales? 2)How do current national and international hazards and disasters policies create inequities in the risk burden and facilitate the spatial and temporal relocation of risk and vulnerability? 3)How can we improve the visualization of risk and hazards, especially as they inform public policies for mitigation and vulnerability reduction? 4) How do individuals cognize risk and how does this influence their response to hazardous events?

As theme leader, it will be my responsibility to act as a key facilitator for geographers who would like to contribute to the IYPE. I am addressing this letter especially to geographers who are involved in special cross-disciplinary national IYPE committees. The main aim is to provide information on ongoing activities in different countries and make it available to the wider research communities, not to establish new research projects. I am seeking researchers who are willing to contribute insights from their work with respect to the above questions related to either science or outreach. I am especially interested in hopeful positive examples, success stories, and best practices.

I would be pleased to receive information on your research findings that speak directly to the questions identified in the IYPE brochure as well as examples of places and mechanisms used to communicate your findings to the media, educators, and the wider public. Also please

send me addresses of colleagues within your geography communities who work on these research questions, preferably by email.

Please let me have your responses by 30 September 2006. This will allow me time to draft a summary outline for the IGU Contributions to IYPE Hazards, including a detailed timetable for presentation of the results to the IGU Executive Committee for consideration at their 11-16 November 2006 meeting in Tunis.

With many thanks,

Susan Cutter