Geography: Natural Disasters

ERTH/GEOG 1060 Homework 4 Instructions

The purpose of this exercise is for you to analyze data on Canadian Natural Disasters

and describe any trend you see. For example, are there fewer hurricanes in Nova Scotia

in the past 30 years than in previous times? Which areas in Canada have the highest

frequencies of tornadoes? Is the number of deaths due to blizzards increasing? We

would also like you to suggest a reason for the trend you see, or suggest why you don’t

see a trend, and try to support your suggestion using information you learned in class or

from another source.

Procedure: On the homework page is a spreadsheet called Question.xls. Open this

spreadsheet in Excel. Find your Dalhousie banner ID in the first column. Next to your

banner ID in the second column is the question you will answer. You can then proceed

to the database to collect the data needed to answer your question.

Go to the following web page for the database:

http://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/prg/em/cdd/index-eng.aspx. Choose to Enter the

Database. You can use either the Geospatial version (which has maps) or the Classic

version (no maps). The maps are not necessary for this exercise.

There you can select one or more provinces (or leave the boxes blank for all), one or

more types of disasters (or all) and one or more date ranges (or all). While some of the

disaster types (such as Biological or Hazardous Chemicals) are not natural disasters, we

will include all types for this assignment. You may sort them in different ways if you

wish. Think first, then choose the data that you will need to answer your question, then

click SEARCH.

A list of the selected disasters should appear with minimal information for each. You

can scan through them to be sure they meet your criteria. To plot your data, you will

need to go through the list of disasters and extract the information by the type of your

question

The questions fall into three types: How does the <disaster> vary by

1. Type - you will need to count the # of events (disasters, fatalities or evacuations) for each type.

2. Location - you will need to count the number of events for each province. 3. Time - you will need to count the number of events for each time interval. You

can use the time intervals on the web page, or make up your own if you think

that’s better.

Make up a table with two columns. The first will have a list of the types, locations, or

time intervals. In the second column in the appropriate cell, fill in the count which you

determined from the web database.

Note: you do NOT need to collect any more data from outside this database.

1. For your submission you need to plot your data using MS Excel or some other graphing software. Your graph should have two labeled axes. The y-axis

should be the number of events, which is the second column you made above.

The x-axis will be the types, locations or time intervals from the first column.

For example the y-axis might be “Number of hurricanes in Atlantic Canada” and

the x-axis “Time (years)”. The graph should have a title. The font size of the

axis values and title, and the size of the symbols for the data points should be

sufficiently large to be clearly visible. Copy and paste your plot into a word

processor file, or save it separately.

2. Write a brief (approximately 250 words) paragraph describing the data, your answer to the question and any limitations or conclusions. Describe the trend

you see. Also answer any of these questions that apply to your trend:

a. Why do you think the trend exists? b. Do you have enough data to be confident that the trend is real? c. What does the trend predict for the future? d. If you do not see a trend, then suggest why there is no trend. Save your

paragraph or add it to your word processor file.

3. Print out your answer and graph (preferably on a single sheet of paper) and hand them in before any class or bring them to the Earth Sciences Department, Room

3006 Life Sciences Centre (for C. Walls’ mailbox). Make sure you put your

name on all submissions.

A “hints for using Excel” document is available on BbLearn.

For the purposes of this assignment, Central Canada includes Ontario (ON) and Quebec

(QC) only. Eastern Canada includes Newfoundland (NL), Nova Scotia (NS), New

Brunswick (NB) and Prince Edward Island (PE) only. Western Canada includes British

Columbia (BC), Alberta (AB), Saskatchewan (SK) and Manitoba (MB). Finally,

Northern Canada includes, the Yukon (YT), Northwest Territories (NT) and Nunavut

(NU). I apologize to anyone who is geographically offended by these divisions, and

plead the necessity for a simple division of the country.

To simplify, Storms (all types) means Storm – Unspecified/Other, Storms and Severe

Thunderstorms and Winter Storms, but not Storm Surge or Tornado. Geological

disasters are Earthquakes, Landslides, Tsunami and Volcanoes. If you disagree with

this you can modify your selection, but explain it in your write-up.

As an example, Charlie’s question is “How does the number of hurricanes vary in time

in Nova Scotia?” He went to the database and checked the box for Hurricane/Typhoon.

Under location, he checked the box for Nova Scotia. He left the time periods blank to

get all events.. He then clicked Search.

The results gave him 14 events (you should get many more!). The dates of the 8 events

were 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008 (2), 2007, 2003, 1990 1989, 1971, 1968, 1964, 1962 and

1959. He makes up his table using Time Intervals for the first column because his

question asks how things vary in time:

Time Interval

# of events

1900-1909 0

1910-1919 0

1920-1929 0

1930-1939 0

1040-1949 0

1950-1959 1

1960-1969 3

1970-1979 1

1980-1989 1

1990-1999 1

2000-2010 7

His chart looks like:

If you do not like the question that you have been assigned, or if you feel the available

data are insufficient to answer your question, you can choose a different trend to

analyze! It cannot, however, already exist on the list of questions in the Question.xls

file. You should clear your question with Charlie ([email protected]) before you

spend much time on it.

DUE: 4:00pm, November 28, 2013