Natural Hazards Are The Price We Pay For Living On An Active Planet GMAT Reading Comprehension

Reading Passage Question

Natural hazards are the price we pay for living on an active planet. The tectonic plate subduction producing Japan’s rugged Tohoku coast gives rise to earthquakes and tsunamis. Florida’s warm sunny weather results from the processes in the ocean and atmosphere that cause hurricanes. The volcanoes that produced Hawaii’s spectacular islands sometimes threaten people. Rivers that provide the water for the farms that feed us sometimes flood.

Humans have to live with natural hazards. We describe this challenge in terms of hazards, the natural occurrence of earthquakes orother phenomena, and the risks, or dangers they pose to lives and property. In this formulation, the risk is the product of hazard and vulnerability. We want to assess the hazards — estimate how significant they are — and develop methods to mitigate or reduce the resulting losses.

Hazards are geological facts that are not under human control. All we can do is try to assess them as best we can. In contrast, risks are affected by human actions that increase or decrease vulnerability, such as where people live and how they build. We increase vulnerability by building in hazardous areas, and decrease it by making buildings more hazard resistant. Areas with high hazard can have low risk because few people live there. Areas of modest hazard can have high risk due to large population and poor construction. A disaster occurs when — owing to high vulnerability — a natural event has major consequences for society.

The harm from natural disasters is enormous. On average, about 100,000 people per year are killed by natural disasters, with some disasters — such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami — causing many more deaths. Although the actual numbers of deaths in many events, such as the 2010 Haiti earthquake, are poorly known, they are very large.

Economic impacts are even harder to quantify, and various measures are used to try to do so. Disasters cause losses, which are the total negative economic impact. These include direct losses due to destruction of physical assets such as buildings, farmland, forests, etc., and indirect losses that result from the direct losses. Because losses are hard to determine, what is reported is often the cost, which refers to payouts by insurers (called insured losses) or governments to reimburse some of the losses. Thus, the reported cost does not reflect the losses to people who do not receive such payments.

“Natural hazards are the price we pay for living on an active planet.”- is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 6 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analyzing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

Question 1
The main idea of the first paragraph is best expressed as

(A) The factors that make an area desirable are also those that can pose the most risk.
(B) The Hawaiian Islands would not exist if not for powerful and explosive volcanoes.
(C) Floods, volcanoes, and earthquakes pose threats to the natural environment.
(D) Humans must learn to live with natural hazards such as volcanoes and tsunamis.
(E) Natural hazards are most prevalent in areas that are sunny and warm.

Question 2
Which of the following might the author of the passage consider an “indirect loss” associated with a disaster?

(A) Desecration of a library due to vandalism
(B) Damage to a school building in a fire
(C) Loss of retail clothing sales due to a mall flood
(D) Death of a ranch’s livestock due to a volcanic eruption
(E) Destruction of a pavilion due to a hurricane

Question 3
According to the passage, an important distinction between hazards and risks is

(A) risks occur naturally, while hazards arise because of human actions
(B) hazards result from risks, and risks result from vulnerability
(C) hazards can lead to disasters, while risks cannot
(D) hazards are not under human control, while risks usually are
(E) risks are harder to quantify than hazards

Question 4
The passage is primarily concerned with

(A) describing the causes and impacts of natural disasters
(B) assessing the impact that disasters render on the global economy
(C) depicting the various ways human beings may endanger themselves
(D) raising awareness of the loss of human lives due to the severity and unpredictability of natural disasters
(E) explaining that natural disasters are not under human control

Question 5
Which of the following best describes the purpose of the fourth paragraph in relation to the passage as a whole?

(A) It uses numerical data and metrics to describe the economic impacts of natural disasters.
(B) It emphasizes how little is actually known about how many lives are lost in natural disasters.
(C) It outlines the differences between hazards and risks to set up information detailed in the remainder of the passage.
(D) It provides sensory details about specific recent natural disasters that may be familiar to readers to evoke an emotional response.
(E) It applies statistical data to emphasize the magnitude of damage created by natural disasters.

Question 6
Which of the following logically follows the information given in the passage?

(A) The number of unreported deaths in the 2010 Haitian earthquake exceeded the number of unreported deaths in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
(B) In the years 2010 and 2004, there were more deaths than average due to natural disasters.
(C) The number of deaths due to natural disasters along Japan’s tectonic plate is greater on average than those experienced on islands such as Hawaii or Haiti.
(D) Economic costs are more frequently unreported than numbers of deaths in any given natural disaster.
(E) Areas of high hazard, such as Japan’s Tohoku coast, may have a lower risk of natural disaster costs than areas where hazard incidents are lower.

Suggested GMAT Reading Comprehension Samples

• Cleopatra, Popularly Called The Queen Of Nile, Is Very Well Known GMAT Reading Comprehension
• In Ursula Leguins Short Story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, Or PCOS (Aka Stein-Leventhal Disease) GMAT Reading Comprehension
• For Ages Logic Has Served As An Introduction To Philosophy, That Is GMAT Reading Comprehension
• All the Perceptions of the Human Mind Resolve Themselves into Two Distinct GMAT Reading Comprehension
• As the Moorish States in all Parts of Spain Fell into Progressive Political GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Every Person is, at Times, Troubled by the Thoughts that their Beliefs GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Global Warming – Increase in Average Temperatures World-Wide – is a Problem GMAT Reading Comprehension
• If You Make a Marked Increase in the Amount of Light Falling Upon GMAT Reading Comprehension
• The Railroads Played a Key Role in the Settlement of the West GMAT Reading Comprehension
• A Growing Body of Research on Sharks and their Relatives Portrays GMAT Reading Comprehension
• A SWOT analysis—the acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Most People Associate Bartering With Poor Or Undeveloped Societies GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Till the Beginning of the 21 Century, the Food Supply Chain Across the GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Woman’s Demand for Equal Suffrage is Based Largely on the Contention GMAT Reading Comprehension
• The great French writer, Montaigne, deserves to be regarded as a classic GMAT Reading Comprehension
• Research Indicates That College Professors Generally Were Raised GMAT Critical Reasoning
• Good Sense Is, Of All Things Among Men, The Most Equally Distributed GMAT Reading Comprehension
• It Is One Of The Disadvantages Of Reading Books About GMAT Reading Comprehension
• To Whatever Quarter Of The Heavens We Look, The Splendours GMAT Reading Comprehension