Extra useful info

Question 1

extra info on extensive risk

Answer 1

Extensive risk is magnified by drivers such as badly planned and managed urban development, environ degradation, poverty and inequality and weak governance. As a result it continues to increase in the world.

Question 2

Difference between natural hazards and disasters

Answer 2

Droughts, quakes etc are natural hazards - they become a disaster when they meet a human population and causes a lot of damage.

Can hazards be truly natural though? yes, we can’t control things like volcanic eruptions, quakes (apart from fracking. But we do influence climate/meterological hazards…

I.e. There is no such thing as natural disasters, only natural hazards. We can’t prevent the natural hazard from occurring, but we can stop it from becoming a disaster!

Question 3

Advantages and disadvantages of risk assessment/risk modelling frameworks

Answer 3

1) QRA;
• Advantages:
- Provides quan. risk information that can be used in CBA of risk reduction measures.
• Cons:
- Very data demanding
- Difficult to quantify temporal prob., hazard intensity and vulnerability.

2) Event-tree analysis:
• Pros:
- Allows modelling of a sequence of events and works well for cascading effects.
• Cons:
- The prob. for the different nodes are difficult to assess and spatial implementation is difficult due to lack of data.

3) Risk matrix approach
• Pros:
- Allows one to express risk using classes instead of exact values and is a good basis for discussing risk reduction measures
• Cons
- No quan. data for CBA of risk reduction measures
- The assessment of impacts and frequencies is difficult and one area might have different combinations of inputs and frequencies.

4) Indicator-based apporach
• Pros
- Only method that allows one to carry out a holistic risk assessment inc. social, eco., environ., vul. and capacity.
• Cons:
- The resulting risk is subjective and doesn’t provide info. on actual expected losses.

Question 4

Define Coping Capacity

Answer 4

The ability of people, organisations and systems, using avaible skills and resources to face and manage disasters.

Question 5

Random

Answer 5

• Detailed models suffer from complex model set-up, high data requirements and long computation times.
• The Flood Directive of the EU (2007) requires flood risk maps for all river basins/sub-basins with sig. potential risk fo flooding in Europe.