SUMMARY

UNDERSTANDING RISK

Effective risk management requires information about both the magnitude of the risk faced (risk assessment) and on how much importance society places on the reduction of that risk (risk evaluation).

Risks are often quantified in aggregated ways (e.g. a probability of 1 in 23,000 per year of an individual dying in an earthquake in Iran). Such gross risk estimates can be useful for comparative purposes, but usually conceal large variations in the risk to individuals or different regions.

The importance a community places on the risk of a natural disaster is likely to be influenced by the type and level of other everyday risks it faces.

The process of economic development needs to incorporate a risk mitigation strategy because traditional ways of coping with environmental risks are otherwise likely to be lost.

Risk is perceived differently by different individuals and different groups. Those with regular access to news media are likely to be more aware of the environmental risks they face than others, but they may also as a result overestimate the likelihood of uncommon risks such as natural disasters.

Risk perception is also influenced by the degree to which a hazard is considered controllable or its effects preventable and by the extent of the 'dread' an individual feels towards it.

The acceptability of a level of risk to individuals and societies appears to increase with the benefits which are obtained from exposure to it, and to be much greater where exposure to the risk is voluntary (as in sports) than where it is involuntary (like natural disasters). The acceptable level of risk also appears to decrease over time as more people become exposed to a particular type of risk.

For many risks, mitigation can best be handled at the level of the community because the exposure of the community is greater than that of the individual, and because protection often requires collective, sometimes large-scale action.

In the 20th century the scale of natural disasters (including famine) has been much greater than that of technological disasters (apart from wars), both in terms of the total number of casualties and the numbers of high-casualty events.

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