Risk and Resilience: Derin Ural College of Engineering University of Miami

Risk
and Resilience
Derin Ural
College of Engineering
University of Miami
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
COLLEGE of ENGINEERING
Transforming Lives Through Education, Research, Innovation and Service 1
Reference: FEMA Higher Education Program
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
Scope Community
Vulnerability &
Understand Capacity
Objectives
• Provide an Overview of Hazard Vulnerability
• Discuss the Four Principal Vulnerability Factors in Detail
• Explain the difference between vulnerability and exposure
• Define critical infrastructure and explain what makes infrastructure
critical
• Explain how the value of community facilities is estimated
• Define risk perception and explain its role in community vulnerability
• Explain how emergency management capacity impacts risk and
vulnerability
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Transforming Lives Through Education, Research, Innovation and Service
Vulnerability
“A measure of the propensity of an object,
area, individual, group, community, country, or
other entity to incur the consequences of a hazard.”
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Session 1Research,
Transforming Lives Through Education, 3 Innovation and Service 5
Vulnerability
• Distinct between individuals, families, groups,
neighborhoods, religions, ages, and many other designations
• Collective, as in the case with nations, regions, and globally
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Chernobyl Nuclear Accident
• Ukraine, 1986
• Affects felt throughout:
• Soviet Union
• Eastern Europe
• Western Europe
• Northern Europe
• Eastern United States
• 60% of fallout in Belarus
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Vulnerability Components
• Hazard Profile
• Emergency Management Capacity
• Four Vulnerability Profiles
• Physical
• Social
• Economic
• Environmental
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The Physical Profile
• A collective examination of:
• Geography and Climate
• Infrastructure
• Populations
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Session 1Research,
The Social Profile
• Measures the following factors that increase or decrease a
population’s propensity to incur harm or damage as result of a
specific hazard.
• Individual
• Societal
• Political
• Cultural
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Session 1Research,
The Environmental Profile
The health and welfare of the natural environment within the area of
study that either contributes to or reduces the propensity of the
affected population to incur the consequences of disasters
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Economic Profile
Financial means of individuals, towns, cities, communities, or whole
countries to protect themselves from the effects of disasters
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Other Vulnerability Factors
• Urbanization
• Rural Livelihoods
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Drought Exposure
14
Exposure vs. Vulnerability
15
Infrastructure Assessment
• What infrastructure is critical
• How are critical infrastructure systems and structures vulnerable (to

damage or failure)
• What options and opportunities exist to reduce such vulnerability
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Infrastructure
• Basic physical and organizational structures, systems
services, and facilities required for the operation of society
• Interconnected and interdependent
• Provide the functional framework for political, social, and
economic operation
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Infrastructure Types
• Object oriented: Components exist as individual facilities,
even if multiple units of that infrastructure component exist
• Network oriented: systems include hubs and nodes, each of
which are interconnected, and are often connected to
hundreds or even thousands of individual facilities
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Critical Infrastructure
Those assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, that
are so vital to the community that their failure or destruction would
have a debilitating impact on security, continuity of government,
continuity of operations, public health and safety, public confidence, or
any combination of these effects. (DHS, 2008)
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Intrinsic Value of Infrastructure
• Direct costs of building, protecting, and rebuilding infrastructure
easy to determine
• The economic and quality of life benefits gained because

infrastructure exists are much harder to measure
• Can extend far beyond the region
• Loss of commerce, security, safety, movement, replenishment of

life-‐sustaining goods, and much more
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Infrastructure Risk Considerations
• Criticality
• Exposure
• Redundancy
• System Complexity
• Geographic Range / Population Served
• Jurisdiction
• Terrorist/Saboteur Valuation
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Infrastructure as Risk Source
• Infrastructure loss can create life/safety hazards, even if no other
hazard event exists
• Businesses, government, individuals, and others can face serious
negative consequences
• Infrastructure failure can cause life threatening situations
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Infrastructure Risk Sources
• From external hazards, and from causes limited to the
infrastructure itself
• Include:
• Poor or misguided land use planning
• Poor, weak or inappropriate construction materials
• Inappropriate construction design
• Insufficient building codes/Inadequate Code Enforcement
• Neglected, deferred, or improper maintenance
• Cascading failure
• Climate change
• Urbanization and remoteness
• Regulation
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Task A: Determine the proportion of buildings, the value of
buildings and the population in your community or state
that are located in hazard areas.
1. Estimate or count total number of buildings, value of buildings and
number of people in your community.
2. Estimate the total number of buildings, total value of buildings and
number of people in each of your hazard areas.
3. Calculate the proportion of assets located in hazard areas.
4. Determine the location of expected growth in your community.
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Task B: Determine whether (and where) you want to collect
additional inventory data.
As you decide how much (additional) information to collect

ask yourself these questions:
1. Is there enough data to determine which assets are subject to
the greatest potential damage?
2. Is there enough data to determine whether significant elements
of the community are vulnerable to potential hazards?
3. Is there enough data to determine whether certain areas of
historic, environmental, political and cultural significance are
vulnerable to potential hazards?
4. Is there concern about a particular hazard because off its
severity, repetitiveness or likelihood of occurrence?
5. Is additional data needed to justify the expenditure of
community or state funds for mitigation initiatives?
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Task C -‐ Compile a detailed inventory of what can be
damaged by a hazard event.
Determine the priorities for your inventory collection efforts.

• Critical facilities
• Vulnerable populations
• Economic elements
• Special considerations
• Historic, cultural and natural resource areas
• Important facilities
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Task C – Continued
Gather building-specific information about the assets.

• Determine the size of the building
• Determine the replacement value
• Determine the content value
• Determine the function use or value
• Determine the displacement cost
• Determine the occupancy or capacity
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Task C – Continued
Gather hazard-‐specific information about the
assets.
28
Risk Perception
A study within the discipline of sociology that looks at why people fear
the things they do
(and also why they do not fear other things)
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Risk Fallibility Conclusion 1
• Cognitive limitations, coupled with the anxieties generated by facing
life as a gamble, cause uncertainty to be denied, risks to be distorted,
and statements of fact to be believed with unwarranted confidence
• Mexico City Example – over-‐estimated fear of crime
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• Perceived risk is influenced (and sometimes biased) by the
imaginability and memorability of the hazard
• People may not have valid perceptions about even familiar risks
• People underestimate common risks and overestimate rarer risks
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• Disaster management experts’ risk perceptions correspond closely to
statistical frequencies of death
• Laypeople’s risk perceptions are based in part on frequencies of
death, but there are many other qualitative aspects that affect their
personal rating of risks
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Risk Factors Related to Dread
• Dreaded vs. not dreaded
• Uncontrollable vs. controllable
• Globally catastrophic vs. not globally catastrophic
• Fatal consequences vs. not fatal consequences
• Not equitable vs. equitable
• Catastrophic vs. individual
• High risk to future generations vs. low risk to future generations
• Not easily reduced vs. easily reduced
• Risk increasing vs. risk decreasing
• Involuntary vs. voluntary
• Affects me vs. doesn’t affect me
• Not preventable vs. preventable
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Factors Related to How Much is Known About
the Risk
• Not observable vs. observable
• Unknown to those exposed vs. known to those
exposed
• Effect delayed vs. effect immediate
• New risk vs. old risk
• Risks unknown to science vs. risks known to
science
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• Disagreements about risk should not be expected to evaporate in the
presence of “evidence.”
• People often are unaware of how little they know about a risk, and of
how much more information they need to make an informed
decision.
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Risk Perception Influence on Mitigation
• If those funding HazMit projects do not perceive the hazard to be
significant, funding is unlikely to be provided
• If the public does not perceive a hazard to affect them personally,
they are unlikely to take any personal measures to prepare or mitigate
• The presence of differing risk perceptions highlights the need for
effective risk communication
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Capacity
• Community emergency response capacity often indicates
vulnerability or resilience
• Capacity must be tailored to community needs
• Resources designed to handle routine events can be developed to
reduce the impacts of disasters as well
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Community Capacity Resources
• Fire Dept. • Mass Casualty Management
• Law Enforcement • Infrastructure Repair
• Public Health/Med • Community Coordinators
• Search & Rescue • Volunteer Management
• HazMat Response • Others
• SWAT
• Emergency Mgmnt
• DMAT/DMORT
• Debris Management
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Risk

“A measure of the propensity of an object,

area, individual, group, community, country, or

other entity to incur the consequences of a hazard.”

Financial means of individuals, towns, cities, communities, or whole

countries to protect themselves from the effects of disasters

• What infrastructure is critical

• How are critical infrastructure systems and structures vulnerable (to

• What options and opportunities exist to reduce such vulnerability

• The economic and quality of life benefits gained because

• Can extend far beyond the region

• Loss of commerce, security, safety, movement, replenishment of

As you decide how much (additional) information to collect

Determine the priorities for your inventory collection efforts.

Gather building-specific information about the assets.

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