Within the past five years, the international community has recognized that it may be possible, through programs of systematic study, to devise means to reduce and mitigate the occurrence of a variety of devastating natural hazards. Among these disasters are earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, and landslides. The importance of these studies is underscored by the fact that within fifty years, more than a third of the world’s population will live in seismically and volcanically active zones. The International Council of Scientific Unions, together with UNESCO and the World Bank, have therefore endorsed the 1990s as the International Decade of Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR), and are planning a variety of programs to address problems related to the predictability and mitigation of these disasters, particularly in third-world countries. Parallel programs have begun in a number of U.S. agencies.

Table of Contents:
Preface /J. B. Rundle, B. Klein, and D. L. Turcotte -- Societal Effects of Natural Disasters -- Scaling Laws for Natural Disaster Fatalities /S. F. Nishenko and C. C. Barton -- Global Fatalities from Earthquakes in the Pt 2000 Years: Prognosis for the Next /R. Bilham -- Floods and Landslides -- Diffusion-Limited Aggregation as a Paradigm for Modeling Dynamical Processes /L. M. Sander -- A Dynamical Systems Approach to Flood-Frequency Forecasting /D. L. Turcotte and K. Haselton -- Multiplicative Cascades and Spatial Variability in Rainfall, River Networks, and Floods /V. K. Gupta and E. Wayrnire -- Inference for a Channel Network Model and Implications for Flood Scaling /B. M. Troutman -- Thickness Statistics of Sedimentary Layers Generated by Gravity-Driven Flows /D. H. Rothman and J. P. Grotzinger -- Earthquakes -- Thoughts on Modeling and Prediction of Earthquakes /S. C. Eubank -- Complexity and Earthquake Forecasting /C. C. Sammis, D. Sornette, and H. SaZeur -- on the Scaling of Average Slip with Rupture Dimensions of Earthquakes /S. Gross -- Rupture Characteristics , Recurrence , and Predict ability in a Slider-Block Model for Earthquakes /Ja B. Rundle. W. Klein. and S. Gross -- A Comparison of Simple Eqrthquake Models: -- Self- Organized Criticality vs . Intermittent P hose Locking /A . V. He rz -- Spinodals and Scaling in Slider-Block Models /w. Klein, C. Ferguson, and J. B. Rundle -- A Hierarchical Model for Precursory Seismic Activation /w. L Newman, D. L. Turcotte, and A. Gabrielov -- Observation of Boltzmann Fluctuations in Stochastic, Massless Slider-Block Simulations /J. B. Rundle, W. Klein, and D. L. Turcotte -- Prediction Studies of Earthquake Falut Models and Applicat ions to Seismic Catalogs /J. Carison -- Index.