Where do hazard and risk analyses fit within emergency management?
If you refer back to your EMG100 Introduction to Emergency Management subject, you will remember that there are four specific emergency management components within the overall emergency management framework:
Hazard and risk analyses provide the information necessary to develop programmes in each of these aspects of emergency management. Efficient, effective, and appropriate response and recovery depends heavily on your expectations of the nature of the work required during the response and recovery following an event. By clarifying these expectations, conducting an effective hazard and risk analysis and developing suitable preparedness initiatives will greatly improve response and recovery. Any rational prevention programme must be based on an understanding of hazards and risks and their interaction with the community and environment.
For now, let's concentrate on prevention and preparedness.
Hazard analysis, risk analysis and emergency prevention and preparedness
We can think of emergency prevention and preparedness as being a series of activities including:
- risk assessment;
- planning;
- training and education;
- monitoring and evaluation.
Ideally, these activities should fit together in the following way,
Figure 1.2
An emergency prevention and preparedness model
In this model, a risk assessment is undertaken. Without a knowledge of the hazards, risks and their likely effects, it is very difficult to develop prevention and preparedness programmes.
Planning in this model does not just refer to 'response planning', that is planning what to do when emergencies occur. It refers to 'emergency management planning', which includes prevention, preparedness, response and recovery strategies. If planning is strategic-that is broad and relatively non-specific in terms of arrangement for emergency management-then emergency procedures are tactical-they are specific methods for achieving a particular observed result. Procedures detail who is to do what, when and where they should do it, and sometimes why. Procedures tend to be single-organisation tactics, and are often restricted to response and recovery.
Having developed plans and procedures, it is necessary to assess the ability of personnel to carry out their assigned tasks and to develop and implement training and education programmes for personnel and the community.
Monitoring and evaluation of prevention and preparedness strategies is required to ensure the strategies are being implemented correctly and are working. Exercising is one means of testing not only plans and procedures, but the ability of personnel to carry out their tasks.
The results of exercises may suggest improvements to planning, procedures and training. And of course, hazards and consequent risks have an unfortunate habit of changing over time, requiring periodic reviews of your hazard and risk analyses.
In reality, much emergency prevention and preparedness work does not proceed through a series of logical steps as shown in the model above. This is mainly due to lack of thought about what should be done, and how it should be done. If you are in a position to implement a new emergency prevention and preparedness program, or to review an existing one, the models above (or 'processes') can form the basis of your work.
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In the next two readings we examine two aspects of hazards and risk. In the first reading a UK author goes back over the disaster record between 1947 and 1980 to assess the contention that disasters are becoming more common and more destructive. He explores reasons for the trend, and recommends the provision of disaster education and training programs, particularly in less developed, low income countries. |
As you read this article keep in the back of your mind how emergency prevention and preparedness programs might have reduced the scope of the disasters and also how the years between 1980 and today may have followed the same or differing trends.
The second reading examines the common interests and tasks of the insurance industry related to the 1990s, which were the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). Where reading 1 looks at specific trends over a 37 year period, reading 2 looks at more recent trends and how the insurance industry is involved in natural disaster reduction.
Read
Reading 1.1: Is the environment becoming more hazardous?-A global survey 1947 to 1980.
Reading 1.2: The insurance industry and IDNDR: Common interests and tasks.
Having read Reading 1.1, answer the following questions:
- What reasons does Shah put forward for the increased frequency of disasters?
- Why are high death tolls mostly a characteristic of developing nations, and not of developed nations?
- In what ways could emergency prevention and preparedness programmes reduce the loss of life from 'disasters'? Consider Figure 1.2 in your answers. Choose only two of the 'disaster agents' (i.e. hazards) listed on p. 206 of this article. Be prepared to spend about 40 minutes on this task.
After reading Reading 1.2 complete these questions:
- The Shah article said: 'It is widely held view that, while the number of natural disasters is decreasing, the area which these disasters encompass and the resultant social impact seems to be increasing'. Does the Berz article support the idea that the number of disasters is decreasing?
- Could the extraordinary increase in economic losses described by Berz have been predicted from data in the Shah article?
- Is the increase in natural disasters, in your opinion, due to an increase in extreme geological events and 'acts of God', or an increase in community vulnerability?
- If you think community vulnerability is increasing, what do you believe makes us increasingly vulnerable?
Finally go online and examine the recent information from Munich Reinsurance (http://www.munichre.com/ ) regarding the current trends in disaster occurrence and impact. The Munich RE site has a large number of online publications relevant to this area. Compare your results to those that Shah identified in his paper and the interests and tasks that Berz identified regarding the insurance industry during the IDNDR years.
Risk assessment and emergency concepts, principles and arrangements
Now that we have placed the analysis of hazards and risk assessment in the framework of prevention and preparedness, it is now time to consider them in the context of overall emergency management.
A word of caution: Whilst the principles and process of risk assessment are generally recognised, they may not be referred to specifically as risk assessment principles and processes in the readings that you will come across. Some or all may be subsumed under other titles such as 'threat assessment', 'vulnerability analysis', 'hazard analysis' and so on. It is also worth noting that for many years 'hazard analysis' was seen as synonymous with 'hazard identification'; that is - just the listing of the hazards. It is only over the last decade that it has been generally recognised that hazard identification is just one of the early steps in the analysis of hazards within the risk assessment process.
Secondly, you may find that other terms may vary: for example 'counter disaster' management, 'disaster' management, 'emergency' management, 'risk' management, 'emergency risk' management and other terms essentially have the same meaning.
To put the term 'hazard analysis' in the emergency risk management context: hazard analysis is a tool which may be used to help identify and analyse hazards in order that levels of risk can be determined.
Similarly vulnerability assessment is a tool which may be used to help identify and analyse the highest priority hazards.
The two publications in the next reading present you with examples of the 'flexibility' of terminology that you may find. The first publication outlines the general principles and concepts of emergency management laid down by the Commonwealth Government of Australia. These guidelines promote a national, coordinated focus to emergency management on the part of all States and Territories, and the levels of organisation within them. The emergency arrangements of Commonwealth, States and Territories that flow from this coordination are outlined in the second publication.
Together, these two publications give you a broad overview of emergency management in Australia. From your study of this introductory topic, you should be able to now determine the roles that hazard analysis and risk assessment play throughout the emergency management process-keep this as your main focus as you progress through the readings. Read the publications in the order shown.
