Dear Alejandro,

Your question is quite wide-ranging, so it is quite difficult to provide you with simple specific answer. I may provide you some examples related to tsunami, where studies of geological record of them were found to be of big advantage in regard to finding hazardous coasts, where tsunamis should be expected and in estimating their possible size.

A good example is the story of Cascadia (US west coast), which has not been yet mapped at the beginning of the 18th century. However because of studies of geological record of tsunami, precise dating, analyses of historical data in Japan and numerical modeling, the big earthquake and tsunami from 1700 is right now quite well known and serves as a reference for coastal hazard assessment. A USGS report (open access) by Brian Atwater and coauthors provide a good review of this story:

http://pubs.usgs.gov/pp/pp1707/

Another good example is history of tsunamis in Japan. In particular of 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami, which appeared to be bigger than expected, although in the historical past similar event has already occured. The details of the story you may find in many papers but probably you may start with:

Goto, K., Chague-Goff, C., Fujino, S., Goff, J., Jaffe, B., Nishimura, Y., Richmond, B., Sugawara, D., Szczuciński, W., Tappin, D.R., Witter, R., Yulianto, E., 2011a. New insights of tsunami hazard from the 2011 Tohoku-oki event. Marine Geology 290, 46-50.

Goto, K., Ikehara, K., Goff, J., Chagué-Goff, C., Jaffe, B. The 2011 Tohoku-oki tsunami - Three years on (2014) Marine Geology, 358, pp. 2-11.

A good review on identification and application of paleotsunami deposits in tsunami hazard assessment is also provided by:

Goff, J., Chagué-Goff, C., Nichol, S., Jaffe, B., Dominey-Howes, D., 2012. Progress in palaeotsunami research. Sedimentary Geology 243-244, 70-88.

I hope that you will find this answer at least partly useful

with regards

Witek