The Handbook of Board Governance, 3rd Edition

36Disaster Management and Risk Assessment

David Etkin, BSc, BEd, MSc

Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management at York University

Introduction

Fundamental to disaster management is assessing risk. Without a good knowledge of the risks that we face as individuals, communities, and institutions, it is very difficult to develop rational and effective strategies to reduce those risks. This chapter outlines the most common approach used to estimate and rank risks within the disaster and emergency management community and discusses some of the traps that can result in flawed risk estimations.

What Is Disaster Risk?

Disaster risk is commonly thought of as having three contributing components:

1. The first is the hazard or threat, which may be natural (e.g., a hurricane or earthquake), technological (e.g., a power failure), or human-caused (e.g., human error or terrorism). These divisions can be somewhat arbitrary and misleading, since many hazards are combinations of them. For example, if a heavy rainfall results in urban flooding, one might view it as a natural event, but if the flooding also occurred because levees failed or storm drains were designed to low standards, then one could just as easily view the flood as resulting from human actions. Hazard mapping (such as typical hurricane tracks) by governments provides essential information about our threat environment.
2. The second component is exposure. Unless people, property, or infrastructure are exposed to a hazard, there ...