A geohazard can be defined as a geological state that represents or has the potential to develop further into a situation leading to damage or uncontrolled risk.[1] This definition implies that geohazards are widespread phenomena that are related to geological and environmental conditions and involve long-term and/or short-term geological processes. Geohazards can thus be relatively small features, but they can also attain huge dimensions (e.g. submarine or surface landslide) and affect local and regional socio-economy (e.g. tsunamis) to a large extent. In addition, human activities - for example drilling through geohazards like overpressured zones - could result in significant risk, and as such mitigation and prevention are paramount, through improved understanding of geohazards, their preconditions, causes and implications. In other cases, particularly in montane regions, natural processes can cause catalytic events of a complex nature, such as an avalanche hitting a lake causes a debris flow, with consequences potentially hundreds of miles away, or a lahar released by volcanism.
The continued and multi-disciplinary investigation into the occurrence and implications of geohazards, in particular offshore geohazards in relation with the oil and gas exploration, lead to specific mitigation studies and establishing relevant prevention mechanisms.[2][3]
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