The Importance of Statistics in Natural Hazards

From landslides and wildfires to floods and tornadoes, Bruce Malamud has spent his career travelling the world and studying natural hazards.

Today, he is Wilson Chair of Hazard and Risk and executive director of the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience at Durham University - but as he tells Jim al-Khalili, a lifelong passion for discovery has taken Bruce from volunteering with the Peace Corps in West Africa and a Fulbright Fellowship in Argentina, to fieldwork in India; not only studying hazards themselves, but also the people they affect - and building up the character and resilience to overcome personal tragedy along the way.

Over the years, his work in the field has opened up new ways of understanding such events: from statistical modelling to show how groups of hazards occur, to examining the cascading relationships between multiple hazards. And today, his focus is on projects that can bring tangible benefits to people at serious risk from environmental hazards - finding innovative ways to help them to better manage that threat.

(Photo: Bruce Malamud. Credit: Bruce Malamud)