Smith states that natural hazards are best seen in an ecological framework to distinguish between natural events as natural hazards. He says, "natural hazards, therefore, result from the conflict of geophysical processes with people and they lie at the interface what has been called the natural events system and the human interface system." He says that "this interpretation of natural hazards gives humans a central role. Firstly through location, because it is only when people and their possessions get in the way of natural processes that hazard exists."
