Contents -- Cover Photograph Anak Krakatau -- Prologue Chaos, Crisis and Catastrophe -- Chapter 1 Natural Hazards -- 1.1 Causation and Association -- 1.2 Extra-Terrestrial Hazards -- 1.2.1 Solar storms -- 1.3 Meteorological Hazards -- 1.3.1 Tropical cyclones -- 1.3.2 Tornadoes -- 1.3.3 Extra-tropical windstorms -- 1.4 Geological Hazards -- 1.4.1 Earthquakes -- 1.4.2 Volcanic eruptions -- 1.5 Geomorphic Hazards -- 1.5.1 Landslides -- 1.5.2 Debris flows -- 1.6 Hydrological Hazards -- 1.6.1 River flooding -- 1.6.2 Storm surges -- 1.6.3 Tsunamis -- Chapter 2 Societal Hazards -- 2.1 Political Violence -- 2.1.1 The wave theory of terrorism -- 2.1.2 Cyber attack -- 2.2 Infectious Disease Pandemics -- 2.2.1 Vaccination -- 2.2.2 SIR analysis -- 2.3 Industrial and Transportation Accidents -- 2.3.1 The learning curve -- 2.4 Fraud Catastrophe -- 2.4.1 Ponzi schemes -- 2.4.2 Operational risk -- Chapter 3 A Sense of Scale -- 3.1 Size Scales of Natural Hazards -- 3.1.1 Tropical cyclones -- 3.1.2 Tornadoes -- 3.1.3 Volcanic eruptions -- 3.1.4 Earthquakes -- 3.1.5 Tsunamis -- 3.1.6 River floods -- 3.1.7 Space weather -- 3.1.8 Extra-terrestrial impacts -- 3.2 Hazard Spatial Scales -- 3.2.1 Tropical cyclones -- 3.2.2 Earthquakes -- 3.2.3 Volcanic eruptions -- 3.2.4 Environmental pollution -- 3.2.5 Debris flows -- 3.2.6 Landslides -- 3.2.7 Tsunamis -- 3.2.8 River floods -- 3.2.9 Extra-terrestrial impacts -- 3.3 The Human Disaster Toll -- 3.4 Models of a Fractal World -- 3.4.1 Model representations -- 3.4.2 Landscape models -- 3.4.3 Uncertainty in model depictions -- Chapter 4 A Measure of Uncertainty -- 4.1 The Concept of Probability -- 4.2 The Meaning of Uncertainty -- 4.3 Aleatory and Epistemic Uncertainty -- 4.3.1 Wavelets and aleatory uncertainty in seismic ground motion -- 4.4 Probability Ambiguity -- 4.4.1 Knightian uncertainty -- 4.4.2 Subjective probability.

4.5 The Weighing of Evidence -- 4.5.1 Bayesian epistemology and Black Swans -- Chapter 5 A Matter of Time -- 5.1 Temporal Models of Hazards -- 5.1.1 Poisson processes -- 5.1.2 Markov processes -- 5.1.3 Waiting for the next event -- 5.2 Long-Term Data Records -- 5.2.1 River discharges -- 5.3 Statistics of Extremes -- Chapter 6 Catastrophe Complexity -- 6.1 Emergent Catastrophes -- 6.1.1 Conspiracies -- 6.1.2 Infrastructure cascade failure -- 6.2 Financial Crashes -- 6.2.1 Complexity of a financial market -- 6.2.2 Financial market bubbles -- 6.3 Ancillary Hazards -- 6.3.1 Tipping points -- 6.3.2 Randomness and order -- Chapter 7 Terrorism -- 7.1 A Thinking Man's Game -- 7.1.1 Targeting -- 7.2 Defeating Terrorist Networks -- 7.2.1 Plot interdiction -- 7.3 Counter-Radicalization -- Chapter 8 Forecasting -- 8.1 Earthquake Forecasting -- 8.1.1 Stochastic triggering model of earthquake occurrence -- 8.1.2 Tsunamis generated by earthquakes -- 8.2 Verification -- 8.3 River Flows and Sea Waves -- 8.3.1 Sea waves generated by extreme storms -- 8.4 Accelerating Approach to Criticality -- 8.5 Evidence-Based Diagnosis -- Chapter 9 Disaster Warning -- 9.1 Decision in the Balance -- 9.1.1 Hazard advisory -- 9.2 Evacuation -- 9.2.1 Landfalling hurricanes -- 9.2.2 Volcanic eruptions -- 9.2.3 River floods -- 9.2.4 Terrorist attacks -- 9.3 The Wisdom of Experts -- 9.3.1 Elicitation of expert judgement -- 9.3.2 Informativeness and calibration -- 9.3.3 The mathematician as decision-maker -- Chapter 10 Disaster Scenarios -- 10.1 Scenario Simulation -- 10.1.1 Counterfactual history -- 10.1.2 Stochastic event sets -- 10.2 Footprints and Vulnerability -- 10.2.1 Footprint uncertainty -- 10.2.2 Vulnerability -- 10.2.3 Murphy's Law -- 10.3 Fermi Problems -- 10.3.1 The Fermi paradox -- 10.3.2 Earth impacts of a meteorite strike.

10.3.3 Solar storm impact on satellite orbit decay -- 10.3.4 Building resonance under earthquake excitation -- 10.3.5 Real-time earthquake casualty estimation -- 10.3.6 Tsunami travel time -- 10.3.7 Gauging injury severity -- 10.3.8 H5N1 avian pandemic influenza -- 10.3.9 Global temperature of the Earth -- Chapter 11 Catastrophe Cover -- 11.1 Probable Maximum Loss -- 11.1.1 Deterministic estimates of maximum earthquake loss -- 11.1.2 Rationale for a probabilistic approach -- 11.1.3 Hazard exceedance probability curves -- 11.1.4 Portfolio loss exceedance probability curves -- 11.1.5 Loss aggregation -- 11.2 Coherent Risk Measures -- 11.2.1 Expected shortfall -- 11.3 The Samaritan's Dilemma -- 11.3.1 Earthquake risk transfer in Tehran -- 11.3.2 Diaspora disaster insurance -- Chapter 12 Catastrophe Risk Securitization -- 12.1 Catastrophe Bonds -- 12.1.1 Bond pricing -- 12.1.2 The WinCAT bond -- 12.2 The Price of Innovation -- 12.2.1 Golden Goal Finance Ltd. -- 12.2.2 Mortality securitization -- 12.2.3 Counterfactual correlations -- Chapter 13 Risk Horizons -- 13.1 Ecological Catastrophe -- 13.1.1 Early warning for tipping points -- 13.1.2 Ecological resilience -- 13.1.3 Environmental impact assessment -- 13.2 Climate Change -- 13.2.1 Climate model confirmation -- 13.2.2 Climate change impacts -- 13.3 War and Conflict Resolution -- 13.3.1 The logic of non-violence -- Epilogue Black and Red Swans -- Bibliography -- Index.