Capabilities-Based Approach to Measuring the Societal Impacts of Natural and Man-Made Hazards in Risk Analysis

This paper presents a capabilities-based approach to identifying and quantifying the expected overall societal impact of natural hazards in engineering risk analysis. Drawing on the work in development economics and policy by philosopher Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, for which he won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998, the societal impact is defined in terms of the impact on selected individual capabilities, the functionings individuals are able, still able, or unable to achieve in the aftermath of a hazard. Individual capabilities capture the net societal impact of hazards, which includes likely benefits and opportunities in addition to losses. A general methodology is discussed for practically implementing the proposed approach to quantifying the expected societal impact, modeled on the framework currently used by the United Nations to assess the level of development of societies around the world. This proposed capabilities-based approach can be used with different methods or techniques for risk and decision analysis and when assessing risk for diverse types of hazards that range from minor to catastrophic.

[1]  T. Bedford,et al.  Probabilistic Risk Analysis: Foundations and Methods , 2001 .

[2]  Peter J. May,et al.  Societal Perspectives about Earthquake Performance: The Fallacy of “Acceptable Risk” , 2001 .

[3]  J. Clapp,et al.  Development as freedom , 1999 .

[4]  Michael K. Lindell,et al.  ASSESSING COMMUNITY IMPACTS OF NATURAL DISASTERS , 2003 .

[5]  Mark G. Stewart,et al.  Terrorism Risks and Blast Damage to Built Infrastructure , 2006 .

[6]  Stephanie E. Chang,et al.  Disasters and transport systems: loss, recovery and competition at the Port of Kobe after the 1995 earthquake , 2000 .

[7]  Amartya Sen,et al.  The Income Component of the Human Development Index , 2000 .

[8]  Joanne M. Nigg,et al.  Anticipated Business Disruption Effects Due to Earthquake-Induced Lifeline Interruptions , 1996 .

[9]  Walter Gillis Peacock,et al.  The Effects of Disaster Damage and Housing AID on Household Recovery Following the 1976 Guatemalan Earthquake , 1987, International Journal of Mass Emergencies & Disasters.

[10]  M. Nussbaum,et al.  Book reviews , 2002 .

[11]  Harry W. Richardson,et al.  The business interruption effects of the Northridge earthquake , 1995 .

[12]  Bob Edwards,et al.  Comparative Assessment of Impacts and Recovery from Hurricane Floyd among Student and Community Households , 2005 .

[13]  D. Mileti.  Disasters by Design: A Reassessment of Natural Hazards in the United States , 1999 .

[14]  Barry Turner,et al.  United Nations (UN) , 2009 .

[15]  Jm Dahlamer,et al.  Determinants of Business Disaster Preparedness , 1997 .

[16]  M. Morris.  Understanding Risk - Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society , 1997 .

[17]  S. Fukuda‐Parr,et al.  Development as Capability Expansion , 2003 .

[18]  A. Sen,et al.  Capability and Well-Being , 1991 .

[19]  A. Fothergill,et al.  Race, ethnicity and disasters in the United States: a review of the literature. , 1999, Disasters.

[20]  Paolo Gardoni,et al.  Determining Public Policy and Resource Allocation Priorities for Mitigating Natural Hazards: A Capabilities-based Approach , 2007, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[21]  Norio Okada,et al.  Measuring Quality of Human Community Life by Spatial-Temporal Age Group Distributions—Case Study of Recovery Process in a Disaster-Affected Region , 2005 .

[22]  Pamela N. Koob.  States of Being , 2004, American Art.

[23]  Nicole Dash,et al.  Evacuation Decision Making and Behavioral Responses: Individual and Household , 2007 .

[24]  J. Church.  Human Development Report , 2001 .

[25]  Walter Gillis Peacock,et al.  Measuring Disaster Impact on Household Living Conditions: The Domestic Assets Approach , 1992 .

[26]  P. Slovic.  Perception of risk. , 1987, Science.

[27]  C. V. Anderson,et al.  The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) , 2002 .

[28]  Joseph M. Bracci,et al.  Uncertainty modeling in earthquake engineering , 2003 .

[29]  James E. Moore,et al.  Regional Economic Models for Performance Based Earthquake Engineering , 2004 .

[30]  Nicole Dash,et al.  Lasting Effects of Hurricane Andrew on a Working-Class Community , 2007 .

[31]  Paolo Gardoni,et al.  The Acceptability and the Tolerability of Societal Risks: A Capabilities-based Approach , 2008, Sci. Eng. Ethics.

[32]  R. Jorissen,et al.  Summary of the Issues Discussed , 1998 .

[33]  Harry W. Richardson,et al.  Economic-Engineering Integrated Models for Earthquakes: Socioeconomic Impacts , 2002 .

[34]  Stéphane Kluser,et al.  Reducing Disaster Risk: a challenge for development , 2004 .

[35]  Paolo Gardoni,et al.  The Role of Society in Engineering Risk Analysis: A Capabilities‐Based Approach , 2006, Risk analysis : an official publication of the Society for Risk Analysis.

[36]  D. Vose.  Risk Analysis: A Quantitative Guide , 2000 .

[37]  Walter Gillis Peacock,et al.  Hurricane Andrew Ethnicity, Gender, and the Sociology of Disasters , 1997 .