DRRR Part 6
Disaster Readiness and Risk Reduction
Assessing Risks
- To reduce risk, most of the focus should be on reducing Vulnerability and the First Step is by understanding the element at risk exposed to each type of hazard.
- Risk Model: Risk = Hazard x Exposure x Vulnerability
- Exposed Elements refer to the number of people and the number of structures within the exposed area.
- Exposure is the degree to which the element at risk are likely to experience hazard events of different magnitude.
- Sectors of the society are more vulnerable to disaster than others because of the different factors contributing to its vulnerability, such as poverty, livelihoods, cultural beliefs, equity, gender and weak social groups.
- Physical Exposure: PhExp = Hazard x Exposure
- Physical - exposed affected area
- Hazard - probability of occurrence of an event at a given magnitude
- Exposure - total population living in the area
Useful Indicators of the Possible Impacts
When disaster strikes, the first to be reported are the following:
1. Casualties (death, missing persons, and injured)
2. Property Losses / Damages
But the other elements which cannot be measured or quantified as easily as possible like intangible losses was taken for granted.
- Wrong: Disaster strikes... Mitigation follows
- Right: Mitigation first to reduce disaster impacts
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended in the following blog posts. The definitions, ideas and concepts presented in this summary are not legally owned by this blog and are used for educational purposes only. Due credits are given to the rightful owners. Thank you.
