You can monitor natural disasters around the world, as published by the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System - www.gdacs.org. It shows the latest natural disasters like droughts, earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tropical cyclones, tsunamis and floods as color coded icons with tool tips on a Google Maps backdrop; the icon colors indicate the alert level - green, orange, and red. The icon will look more transparent the older the event was published. There is also a list view which can be used to sort the natural disaster events according to the date & time, region, and disaster type. Clicking on the icon will bring up more details about the disaster event.