Term 2 - Theme 2 (2) Flashcards
Hazard - Wisner et al (2004)
Natural events that may affect different places slightly or in combination at different times.
Disaster - Wisner, B et al (2004)
A disaster occurs when a significant number of vulnerable people experience a hazard and suffer sever damage and/or disruption of their livelihood system in such a way that recovering is unlikely without external aid.
Vulnerability
Characteristics of individuals or groups that influence impact and recovery.
Risk equation
Hazard probability x elements at risk x vulnerability
Stages of disaster
Impact, relief, rehab and recovery.
Park’s (1991) disaster response curve
Stage 1 - modifying the case and event, Stage 2 - The hazardous event, Stage 3 - Entering relief stage - Search, rescue and care. Stage 4 - Entering rehab stage - may include outside help. Stage 5 - reconstruction phase - nature of recovery related to: the need to reduce vulnerability and the need to restore asap.
Risk - Smith and Petley (2009)
Risk assessment involves - the identification of hazards likely to result in disasters, the estimation of the likelihood of such events and the evaluation of social consequences of the hazard.
Magnitude-probability relationship - Smith and Petley (2009)
Many natural hazards can be mesured objectively on scientific scales of magnitude or intensity. Unfortunately, such scales tend to measure just one physical factor that influences disaster impact.
Disaster effects on vulnerability
Disaster impact severity reflects the level of vulnerability, vulnerability is not static it varies over time, when the magnitude is plotted against the logarithm of its frequency it usually exhibits a relationship of increasing frequency/decreasing magnitude and vice versa.
Specific characteristics of hazard and its context
Velocity of avalanche flow - nature of snow. One factor scales e.g. maximum sustained wind speed. Local conditions e.g. earthquake on a mountain vs earthquake on a submarine fault.
Annual probability of events for an American (Landon, 1994, book of risk).
Having a car accident - 1 in 12, Being murdered - 1 in 11,000, being killed in aeroplane crash - 1 in 250,000. Being killed by lightning - 1 in 10,000,000.
Garvin, 2001
An individual’s perception of risk is the result of complex interactions between the goal attitudes taken by the community in which the person lives and any personal experience of dealing with the hazard in question..
Social amplification
When factors combine to create an exaggerated fear of a threat. If tends to occur when the threat is new to individuals, when people believe that the true magnitude of the risk is being hidden from them in some way.
Wynne (192) risk perception
Coined the term ‘deficit mode’ to denote how objective scientists are juxtaposed to irrational lay people in many theories of the human response to risk.
Starr (1969) Voluntary and involuntary risks
In the case of the voluntary activities, the individuals uses his own value system to evaluate life experiences. Involuntary activities differ in that the criteria and options are determined not by the individuals affected but by a central body.
Slovic (2000) Psychometric approache
One strategy for studying perceived risk is to develop a taxonomy for hazards that can be used to understand and predict responses to their risks. The psychometric paradigm uses psychophysical scaling and multivariate techniques to produce quantitative representations of risk attitudes and perceptions.
Slovic (2000) - People’s quantitive judgments of risk based on 5 other properties.
1 - the hazard’s score on characteristics that have been hypothesised to account for risk perception and attitudes. 2 - the benefits that each hazard provides to society. 3 - the number of deaths caused by the hazard in an average year. 4 - the benefits that each hazard provides to society. 5 - the seriousness of each death for a particular local relative to a death due to other causes.
the ‘dread’ factor
The higher a hazard’s score on Slovic’s scores, the higher its perceived risk, the more people want to see strict regulation employed to achieve the desired reduction in risk.
socio-cultural approach - locality and place
sensory and direct experience, stigma. Agency: The able male effect. Controllability
Ho et al (2008) study
Examine how risk perceptions is influenced by the type of disaster. the negative associations between the sense of controllability and the perceived amount of risk is high for landslide events but not for flood victims.
Ho et al male’s
in many disaster prone areas, the main recipient of the risk communication campaign are males, who are also likely to be the decision makers in many suburban disaster prone areas. There is less financial loss or sense of death.
Communication
Trust in experts + authorities. Social factors influencing trust. Terminology; scale or reporting. Correspondence between expert information.
