Technological and context hazards

Question 1

Technological hazards

Answer 1

‘man made accidents’ – human action or inaction Restrictions – not warfare or terrorism Accidental failures of design/management with potential to cause loss of life, damage to property or environment on a community scale.

Question 2

Technological hazards: High reliability school

Answer 2

• High priority to reliability and safety (failure free performance) - In-build redundancy (‘fail safe components’) - Delegation – local level decision making – quick response for accident prevention - High level training and clear communication relating to safety

Question 3

Technological hazards: normal accidents school

Answer 3

• Serious accidents are inevitable - Complexity = uncertainty (potential failure) – safety and reliability are of similar importance to other KPIs - Pressures of innovation – faults, old equipment – failures - Training and ‘expert’ decision making cannot eliminate factors – potential for human/technological error

Question 4

Windscale

Answer 4

10th Oct 1957 a fire ripped through radioactive materials in the core of Britain’s first nuclear reactor. If they let the fire burn out, it could spread, if they put water on the reactor, they risk turning it into a nuclear bomb. The politicians and military ignored but eventually by turning on the water and shutting of the air they managed to put out the fire

Question 5

Seveso

Answer 5

Industrial accident in 1976. One of the buildings of the plant was getting dangerously hot as cooling mechanisms were turned off. When the temp reached a critical level, a pressure release valve opened and about 1kg of TCDD was released. TCDD is a dioxin that is a byproduct of industrial activities like bleaching wood etc. Within a few hours over 37000 people were exposed to unprecedented levels of dioxin

Question 6

Natech hazards

Answer 6

• ‘Natech’ hazards – secondary hazards that are anthropogenic in orgin resulting from a natural hazard - e.g. Toxic spills through loss of containment

Question 7

Seveso II directive implemented after the Seveso disaster

Answer 7

requires European countries to identify high-risk industrial sites and to take appropriate measures to prevent major accidents involving dangerous substances and limit their consequences for man and the environment

Question 8

Campedel et al (2008) - industrial effects of earthquakes

Answer 8

Assessing risks caused by hazard substances released due to earthquakes. In seismic zones the additional risk coming from damage caused may be up to more than one order of magnitude higher than associated internal fracture.

Question 9

Campedel et al (2008) methodology

Answer 9

Methodology based on vulnerability models for the main equipment categories and allows or assessment of the different scenarios that may be triggered by the impact of the external hazard on the industrialised system where hazardous material are present

Question 10

Campedel et al (2008) main factor influencing the final rresults

Answer 10

Were models of equipment vulnerability and the assumptions for the reference damage state of the process equipment

Question 11

Cruz and Krausmann (2009)

Answer 11

Hurricane Katrina and Rita triggered numerous hazardous materials released from industrial facilities and storage terminals on shore as well as from oil and gas production - identified over 600 hazardous materials released by the hurricanes from offshore platforms and pipelines

Question 12

Cruz and Krausmann (2009) safety releases

Answer 12

Only 3-6 releases of 100- barrels or more was attributed to the successful operation of safety valves.

Question 13

Cruz and Krausmann (2009) problems with hazmat releases and implications for the future

Answer 13

Hazmat releases following was slow and in some cases not done at all. Stress the importance of improving the existing system and the offshore industry must take action to improve risk management

Question 14

Cruz and Okada (2008) concern

Answer 14

Concern for natural hazard triggered technological disasters in densely populated and industrialised areas is growing.

Question 15

Cruz and Okada (2008) lessons from the past

Answer 15

Lessons from previous disasters such as the Natech disaster during the Kocaeli earthquake call the need to manage low frequency/high consequence events.

Question 16

Cruz and Okada (2008) Proposed methodology

Answer 16

The paper proposes a methodology intended for use by local government officials in consultation with the public considering possible interactions between the various systems in the urban environment: the physical infrastructure, the natural environment and risk and emergency management systems

Question 17

Girgin and Krausmann (2013)

Answer 17

A unified methodology was developed that is based on the estimation of on site natural hazard parameter, determination of damage probabilities of plant units, and assessment of probability and severity of possible triggered natech events.

Question 18

Girgin and Krausmann (2013) Rapid N

Answer 18

The methodology implements as an online, extensible risk assessment and management software called rapid N which allows for easy modification of input parameters, dynamic generation of consequence models and extension of models by adding new equations

Question 19

Fukushima, 2011

Answer 19

A 15m tsunami disabled the power supply and cooling of three Fukushima reactors causing a nuclear accident. All 3 cores melted in the first 3 days. The accident was 7 on the INES scale and 4 reactors were written off

Question 20

Aberfan Disaster (1966)

Answer 20

Collapse of a colliery spoil tip killing 116 children and 28 adults caused by a build up in accumulated rock and shale which started to slide downhill in the form of a slurry.

Question 21

Context hazard

Answer 21

“Climate change exposes people, societies, economic sectors and ecosystems to risk. Risk is the potential for consequences when something of value is at stake and the outcome is uncertain, recognizing the diversity of values…An integral feature of IPCC report is the communication of the strength of uncertainties in scientific understanding underlying assessment findings” (IPCC, 2014)

Question 22

Politics of abundance - affluenza

Answer 22

The tsunami of the global marketplace has overtaken the simplicity trend - humans are multiplying, the savings rate in the US is almost zero and household debt is rising. Affluenza exposes frugal and rational concerns to a haze of unwanted adverts and shopping malls and social bills to remediate the side effect of affluenza

Question 23

Role of suburbia

Answer 23

People after WW2 taking to the role of the suburbs - increased the role of the commute - big houses 2 car garages etc.

Question 24

Politics of ‘blind belief’

Answer 24

The BBC estimates that there might be 1300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas present in North of England - double previous estimates, meanwhile the government has announced measures to enable shale gas drilling as part of its infrastructure plans.

Question 25

Politics of science

Answer 25

“…the emergence of ‘neoliberal science’ as an alternative to regulatory regimes has coincided with increasing distrust of science among conservatives” (Gauchat, 2012: 1983)

Question 26

Politics of governing environment

Answer 26

• The neo-liberalisation of ‘environment’ (Dobson, 2010): Regulation; disincentives; incentives; exhortation. - Conflicting frameworks for governing the environment (Seyfang, 2005: Spaargaren and Mol, 2008) - Emergence of ‘public engagement’ (Owens, 2000), Behavioural change and the ‘consumer citizen’ (Slocum, 2004)

Question 27

Social science of climate change - Psychological

Answer 27

• Lorenzoni et al’s (2007) notion of ‘barriers’ to engagement with climate change: individual and social - Three key forms of ‘engagement’ – cognitive, affective, behavioural - “This paper has highlighted the need for both targeted and tailored information provision, supported by enabling and equitable structural conditions, to foster public engagement”

Question 28

‘psychology of denial’

Answer 28

• “A number of psychological devices that people select to justify the emotional dissonances they can experience when confronted with the challenge of changing much preferred consumption patterns and lifestyles in the course of reducing” (Stoll, Kleemann et al, 2001: 107) - Reinforcing strategies – Self-identity and comfort, costs are too great, climate problem over played, lack of faith in government.

Question 29

Social science of climate change - sociological

Answer 29

• “Traditional print and broadcast media…play a central cultural role in modernity through the selective provision of social knowledge, including hat of science and technology” (Carvalho and Burgess, 2005: 1458) - 1985-1990: from silence to the political construction of risk - 1991-1996: climate change recedes in the public sphere - 1997-2003: danger comes close to home

Question 30

Policy focused

Answer 30

Question 31

Social marketing as a pathway to consumption reduction

Answer 31

Peattie and Peattie (2009) argue that: “The nature of the anti-consumption challenge foes far beyond a need to adjust social marketing’s vocabulary of words and ideas. Promoting a consumption reduction agenda within the consumer societies of industrialized nations is a difficult task because ti goes against the highly consumption-orientated dominant social paradigm”

Question 32

Prognosis but nor prediction

Answer 32

If there is any positive side to stark changes coming our way, it may be in the benefits of close communal relations, of having to really work intimately with our neighbours, to be part of an enterprise that really matters and to be fully engaged in meaningful social entacments instead of being merely entertained to avoid boredom. Years from now, when we hear singing at all, we will hear ourselves, and we will sing with our whole hears (Kunstler, 2005)