Whether to implement rationing of hydroelectricity now or later. Revision public budgets or investment plans. Public education on discouraging mosquito breeding sites in areas affected by dengue and malaria. The design of a new irrigation scheme over the next few years. Typically, for a climatic event to be considered a hazardous event, it must be either of long duration, of large areal extent, or be unusually extreme.
History records some events in which all three characteristics appear to have afflicted societies.
However, he argues that the massive loss of life did not arise simply as a result of the climatic events, but principally from the failure of previously-existing public adaptations to drought. As a result, the hazard became a disaster. An issue in respect to all natural hazards is whether we learn that sufficiently from past events, to be well prepared for the next. The really extreme events do not happen often, and human memory and experience of such events cannot remain vivid over long periods. A number of IRI projects are indirectly concerned with hazards in agriculture and food security, research on vulnerability, reservoir management and social factors in regional fire risk hazard.