Geography 2152F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Probabilistic Risk Assessment, Nuclear Meltdown, Natural Disaster
12 Oct 2016
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Document Summary
Maintaining databases on disaster events can be difficult. Disasters can co-occur (hurricanes cause floods, earthquakes cause. Mortality can be difficult to count (famine, epidemics) A general lack of census taking (in developing countries) Some people may consider certain events to be disasters while other people may not. Therefore, a specific definition of a disaster has been developed. A threshold has been developed by the centre for research on the. 100 or more persons affected (injured, homeless, etc) For drought or famines, at least 2000 person affected. For technological disaster, 5 or more deaths per event. Statistical data is reported in absolute terms (number of casualties, billions of dollars in damage, etc. ) The impact of losses is felt differently from one place to the next. 10 fishers lost in a remote village of 200 people (impact will be higher) versus 10 factory workers in a city of 200,000. Therefore, statistics must be placed in a community/regional context.
