Researching the option: studying in depth and building a portfolio
This is A Level content, and it opens Option 1, Tectonic Activity and Hazards, one of the four research options on the WGE04 paper (Unit 4: Researching Geography).
You study one option, and the paper gives you one 60-mark question on it, answered as a research report.
The option builds on the hazards you met at AS Level in World at Risk (plate margins, the disaster risk equation, prediction and the Park model are assumed and taken much deeper here).
The starting point to learn word for word: the chosen option should be studied in depth; independent work and individual reading and research should be undertaken by students to build a portfolio of material that can be selected from and applied in the examination.
The idea: you arrive with your own evidence
Every other geography paper hands you a Resource Booklet.
Unit 4 hands you nothing: no figures, no data, no case study.
The only instruction about evidence on the paper is that you must use your own research.
So the marks depend on what you carry into the room in your head, and on how well you select from it and apply it to a question you have not seen.
That is why the key words above are select and apply.
A portfolio is not a pile of notes.
It is a bank of located, dated, sourced evidence, organised so that any piece can be pulled out to support or attack a claim.
A student who knows ten disasters as stories will write ten stories.
A student who has filed each disaster under the ideas it proves (governance, housing type, warning time, insurance, aid timing) can build an argument on any question.
Why depth beats breadth here
The report is marked on five strands (section 3 sets them out).
Research knowledge (R) is worth 15 marks and is the strand candidates find easiest.
Analysis (A, 20 marks) and Conclusion and evaluation (C, 15 marks) are worth 35 marks together, and they reward using evidence to argue, not reciting it.
Depth means you know each case well enough to say why it turned out as it did, which is what analysis needs.
A case known only as "Nepal 2015, magnitude 7.8, about 9,000 dead" can only be described; a case known with its causes, its players and what happened afterwards can be argued with.
What to research for this option
Organise the portfolio by the three enquiry questions.
For each one, build the same four layers:
Layer
What it holds
Example for this option
Concepts and models
definitions, processes, theories you can use as evidence
Park's model, the hazard management cycle, the disaster risk equation, hazard profiles
Located cases
named, dated events and places, two or three hard numbers each, across development levels
Bam 2003 (Iran), Christchurch 2011 (New Zealand), Nyiragongo 2021 (DR Congo)
Arguments
claims each case supports, and claims it undermines
"Housing type explains Bam's death toll better than magnitude does"
Sources
where each fact came from, and one limitation of that source
death toll from the national disaster agency; may be revised
The first enquiry question (processes) is background for the others: examiners have reported that explaining plate processes for their own sake earns little.
The second (why hazards become disasters) and the third (management) are where questions have focused, so give them most of your portfolio space.
Every point in all three must still be learned, because the research focus changes every series.
Which sources to use, and how to judge them
You are rewarded for knowing where evidence comes from and how far to trust it.
Learn the main kinds:
Kind of source
Examples for tectonic hazards
Use it for
One limitation
UN agencies
UNDRR (reports, Sendai Framework monitoring), OCHA situation reports, WHO
standard definitions; early impact counts; aid flows
early counts change as access improves; depend on government figures
National agencies and statistics offices
USGS, GeoNet (New Zealand), AFAD (Türkiye), Iran's earthquake research institute, Nepal's disaster agencies
magnitude, depth, official death tolls, rebuilding progress
governments may understate failures or overstate recovery
Disaster databases
EM-DAT (CRED, UCLouvain), NOAA's tsunami and earthquake databases, the Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program
long-run trends, comparisons between events
entry thresholds and better reporting since about 2000 distort trends
NGO reports
IFRC appeals, Oxfam, Save the Children
community-level impacts, who was missed
written partly to raise funds or press a cause
Peer-reviewed studies
journals such as Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, Nature
causes, independent death-toll estimates, model testing
can be years behind events; narrow study areas
Insurers and development banks
Swiss Re, Munich Re, World Bank damage assessments
economic losses, insured share
count assets, so losses look larger in rich places
News reports
major international and national outlets
recent events, quotations from players
first reports are often wrong; selective
Judge any source on four questions: who produced it and why; when (first-week count or final figure); how the number was collected (counted, estimated, modelled); and whether others agree.
Where sources disagree, give the range and name who says what.
That single habit earns marks in R (accurate evidence), C (evaluation of evidence) and Q (awareness of partiality).
How to reference
Use short in-text tags, organisation and year, every time you use a fact: "about 8,790 people died (Government of Nepal PDNA, 2015)".
At the end of the report add a short sources list or a small table (source, why chosen, one limitation).
Keep it short: examiners warn that a long methods table eats time you need for the conclusion.
Never write a web address.
Connect it
This section links to every other section in the unit: each case you learn later should end up as a portfolio card.
It also links back to World at Risk, where you met EM-DAT and the problem of measuring disaster impacts; here those problems become evaluation points you use in the conclusion.
- Portfolio: your organised bank of research (concepts, located cases, arguments and sources) from which you select evidence in the exam.
- Primary source (for a fact): the organisation that collected or measured it, such as a national seismological agency for a magnitude.
- Partiality (bias): the tendency of a source to present evidence in a way that serves its producer's aims.
- Located example: a named place and event with its date and figures, never a whole country or continent standing alone.
You file the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran.
Strong card:
1. Event: Bam, Kerman province, south-east Iran, 26 December 2003, 05:26 local time; Mw 6.6; focus about 10 to 15 km deep (USGS).
2. Impacts: deaths about 26,000 (Iran's official figure) to about 40,000 (later independent estimates, such as Berberian, 2005); about 30,000 injured; most of the city's buildings destroyed or beyond repair; the Arg-e Bam citadel, a World Heritage Site, badly damaged.
3. Why so severe: shallow focus directly under the city; night-time, people asleep indoors; heavy adobe (mud-brick) and unreinforced masonry houses that collapsed into dust.
4. Arguments it supports: housing type and time of day explain deaths better than magnitude; governance (building codes existed but were not enforced in old housing).
5. Source note: death tolls range widely; the official count is lower than later independent estimates.
Weak card: "Bam earthquake, Iran, 2003.
Big earthquake, many deaths, mud houses."
Outcome: the strong card can be used in a question on socio-economic factors, on governance, on measurement (Mercalli against magnitude) or on data reliability.
The weak card can only be described, and it has no date detail, no numbers and no source.
After the 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Government of Haiti gave a death toll of 316,000.
A 2011 study commissioned by USAID, never formally released, estimated 46,000 to 85,000.
1. Who and why: a government may raise a count to show the scale of need for aid; an outside study may use survey methods that miss whole families who died.
2. How: the government figure was announced at the first anniversary with no published method; the USAID-commissioned study, a draft by a private consultancy that was never finalised, scaled up a household survey of sampled neighbourhoods.
3. Why the range is so wide: there was no recent census of Port-au-Prince's crowded informal districts to count from; thousands of bodies were buried in mass graves before anyone counted them; and a household survey cannot record households in which everyone died, so it tends to undercount. An independent household survey (Kolbe and others, 2010) estimated about 160,000, between the two.
4. Use in a report: "Estimates range from about 46,000 to 316,000 (USAID-commissioned study, 2011; Government of Haiti), so the exact toll is uncertain, but every estimate places it among the deadliest earthquakes of the century."
Outcome: the range is reported with both producers named, and the conclusion uses the uncertainty as evaluation instead of hiding it.
Examiners have criticised reports where everyone in a centre used the same cases and the same argument.
Build your own portfolio: at least three located examples per enquiry question, across developed, emerging and developing countries, including at least one from the last ten years, and know a source for every number you plan to quote.
- Learning cases as stories. A story gives you R marks only; filing each case under the arguments it supports is what lets you score in A and C.
- Quoting numbers with no source or date. An unsourced number earns less in R and nothing in Q; "about 8,790 deaths (Government of Nepal, 2015)" earns in both.
- Treating one death toll as the truth. Tolls for large disasters often differ by thousands; give the range and the measuring body.
- Spending the portfolio on plate processes. Processes are needed to explain prediction and vulnerability, but a report that explains them for their own sake scores little.
Check your understanding
1. A student says: "If I learn ten case studies in detail, I will get high marks in Unit 4." Explain why this claim is only partly true. (4) Total [4]
2. Explain why a death toll reported in the first week after an earthquake may differ from the final figure. (4) Total [4]
3. Using the sources table in this section, assess the reliability of a national government agency as a source for the number of houses rebuilt after an earthquake. (6) Total [6]
4. Explain how filing a case under the arguments it supports helps in the Analysis strand. (4) Total [4]
5. Write a one-line in-text reference and a one-line limitation for a magnitude you would quote from a national seismological agency. (2) Total [2]
Answers
1. Detailed cases build Research knowledge (1), but R is only 15 of 60 marks (+1). Analysis and Conclusion (35 marks) reward applying the evidence to the claim in the question (1), so ten cases learned as stories, with no arguments attached, would still score modestly (+1).
2. Early counts come from areas reached first; remote areas are reached later (1), so tolls usually rise (+1). Missing people may be confirmed dead or found alive later (1). Counting methods and who is counting can change, and governments may revise figures (1).
3. Strengths: the agency runs the programme and holds the most complete records (1), so it can give a full national count (+1). Weaknesses: it may wish to show success, so it may count houses started or funded as rebuilt (1), and it may not record quality or whether families moved back (+1). Check against NGO reports or independent studies (1). Judgement: useful for the scale of rebuilding but should be treated as an upper estimate until checked (1).
4. The case is already linked to claims it supports or undermines (1), so in the exam it can be applied directly to the question's factor (+1); it makes counter-arguments easy to find, since the same card shows where the factor did not matter (1), and it keeps each paragraph focused on the question, not on narrative (+1).
5. "Mw 6.6 (USGS, 2003)" (1). Limitation: early magnitudes are often revised, and agencies can differ by 0.1 to 0.2 (1).