Risk perception + general definitions

Risk

the potential impact to life/property. The preparedness, awareness, perceptions, communication, avoidance, acceptance are all components of risks

risk perception

attitudes, judgement, knowledge, beliefs, and feelings towards risk

what informs perceptions of risk

• education

• scope and effectiveness

• exposure

• cultural context

determinism

a type of risk perception that people believe certain random event is more or less likely to happen based on the outcome of a previous series of events

determinism example

people might experience what is deemed a 1 in 100 year flood and mistakenly assume it won’t happen again for another 100 years

dissonance

a type of risk perception of denial or minimization of risk. Events are viewed as freak occurrences unlikely to be repeated. Can be coping or stress management strategy

dissonance example

people impacted by Christchurch Earthquakes minimized in impact of future earthquakes because it was too hard to cope with

Probabilism

the understanding that disasters occur, and patterns may not always be clear, often used in combination with deference of responsibility to a higher power (the govt, God).

factors that increase risk perception

• immediate or direct impact (wildfire, earthquake)

• dreaded hazard (cancer)

• many fatalities per event (air crash)

• uncontrollable (cyclone)

• not well understood (nuclear accident)

factors that decrease risk perception

• voluntary hazard (mountaineering)

• delayed impact (drought)

• indirect impact (drought)

• common hazard (car accident)

• controllable (ice on highways)

• well understood (snow storms)

hazard

the actual event. natural process/phenomena that can be geol, hydro, atmosphere, biological that may cause loss of life, socio-economic disruption or environmental degregation

disaster

complex social phenomena that is a consequence. A serious disruption to the function of community at any scale, involving losses due to hazardous event interacting with conditions of exposure, leads to loss of: human, material, economic, environmental degradation and impact

magnitude

related to energy releases, examples could be pressure of a cyclone, depth of rainfall

frequency

the # of events in a given period of time

relationship between magnitude and frequency

relationship conceptualized as log-normal, larger with more energy means the rarer it is in time

stationarity

an assumption underlying many statistical procedures used in time series analysis. This is a time series whose statistical properties such as mean variance etc. are all constant over time

stationarity and climate/environmental change

risk equation

hazard x consequence (exposure or vulnerability)

vulnerability

conditions determined by physical, social, environmental factors/processes which increase susceptibility

resilience

ability of a system to resist, absorb or accommodate

risk, hazard, and vulnerability relationship

risk is at its highest when a high level of exposure to natural hazard coincides with a very vulnerable community

human ecology

interconnectedness of social structures and physical environment are linked, health of each rely on both

importance of stationarity

most forecasting methods assume distribution has stationary, surface processes and environmental change like deforestation and climate change for better storm monitoring

return period/recurrence interval

the statistical estimate of the likelihood of an event occurring. The probability that the given even wil be equalled or exceeded in any given year