Hazard Assessment

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RMI260 Disasters Risk Management

Tutor’s Name: Mr. Muzafar Mansour

Student’s Name: Mahmoud Assaf

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General Aspects of Data Monitoring and
Measuring
 There is a variety of definitions of “hazard”. Very generally,
hazards are: “natural conditions that can cause damages on
property, claim death and injury or destroys the economic and
ecological base of human life.

 From a geological standpoint the Earth is a “product” of

geological processes that define the distribution of land and sea,
of mountains and plains, rivers, and lakes, of meteorological
processes that constitute our atmosphere. All these processes
are steadily changing the face of our Earth and are thus a
phenomenon of which human mankind is a part.
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 Natural disasters strike the people in general randomly,

infrequently, and without prior warning. But frequency and
impact of the natural disasters are not at all equally distributed
over the world. There is a clear geographical and time-related
preference that results in some regions of the globe being more
often and more heavily affected than others.

 But not only nature can be hazardous to humankind; human

activity also often interferes with the natural system that may
again interfere with the human environment.

 the different indicators describing a hazard vary a great deal and

that there is no “single” relationship between them.
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 there is no hazard type that has the lowest probability, the

shortest duration, the smallest regional distribution, or the
longest lead time. The very different character of the hazard
types makes working out a generalized riskreduction strategy
difficult, not to say impossible. However, there is in the large
difference in hazard types the clue for hazard-specific risk-
reduction measures.
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International Classification Scales of
Hazard Intensity

 There are quite a number of scales in use that enable scientists

and risk managers to better qualify each event according to its
severity and frequency. The main criteria are in general physical
parameters.

 all major disaster management agencies worldwide set up

classification schemes of natural hazards to better address the
hazards to standardize and harmonize disaster impact data in
order to make them understandable, transferable, and
comparable worldwide.
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Examples of major disaster
management agencies
 Earthquake Magnitude and Intensity Scale: Richter Scale and Mercalli Scale

 Volcano Explosivity Index: The Volcanic Explosivity Index (VEI) was established in
1982 by the US

 Volcano Alert Levels for International Air Traffic: (Aviation Color Code)

 Beaufort Wind Scale (United Kingdom, Royal Navy)

 The Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

 Tsunami Watches and Warnings: The Joint Australian Tsunami Warning Centre

 European Snow Avalanche Danger Scale

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Single Hazard Assessment

 The next step is to go from data on a particular hazard to a regional hazard

distribution. The aim of hazard assessment is to identify and map the
different hazard types according to their regional distribution, severities,
and frequencies on the Earth’s surface.

 Hazard assessment serves two different aims:

 To assess the hazard potential of a certain area. Therefore detailed

information on a small map scale is required.

 To assess the general hazard exposure of an entire region or a country.

 The map scale has to be much larger and the information density is less
detailed and more generalized.
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The Hazard Cascade

 Natural hazards are mainly a result of plate tectonics or climate

factors. Such factors can directly trigger ground motions,
volcanic eruptions, a variation in rainfall patterns, or many other
hazardous event types. Indirectly they can cause secondary
hazards, such as landslides that then can develop into
mudslides when simultaneously heavy rainfall sets in. Or a
tsunami is generated from an earthquake when the oceanic
plate is suddenly lifted up. Hazards caused by other hazards are
referred to as concatenated hazards or cascading hazards.
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Multiple Hazard Distribution

 Multihazard assessment is the basic means for regional and spatial planning. Single-
hazard assessment although it provides valuable information for apreventive risk
management, is still mostly in use to assess specific scientific and technical problems
related to natural hazards often carried out by natural scientists and risk assessors.

 Multiple hazard maps deserve, as do single-hazard maps, a pre-emptive decision to

the type of map that should be established:

 What kind of questions shall be addressed?

 What kind of data are available?

 What kind of data are required?

 What groups of society or spatial planners should be addressed?

 What kind of data and in what form do the users need the information?

 What kind of disaster prevention activities should be triggered with theinformation?

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Thank you