Regions of Risk

A Geographical Introduction to Disasters

Kenneth Hewitt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781138148109
• eBook ISBN: 9781317894162
• Topic: Sciences physiques
• Subtopic: Géographie

An introduction to hazards, human vulnerability and disaster, paying particular attention to the more severe or novel risks and disaster that affect the general public. The book is split into two parts, the first of which gives an overview of the field of risk and disaster in terms of three perspectives: hazards perspective; vulnerability perspective and the active perspective. The second part illustrates and develops these ideas in relation to some of the more severe dangers and disasters of the twentieth century, for example, earthquake risk, cities at risk and the civil disasters of war.

Part 1

Approaches to risk and disaster

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CHAPTER 1

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Risk and damaging events

Anything can be a risk; it all depends on how one analyses the danger, considers the event.

Francois Ewald (1991, 199)

All kinds of intangible notions … are put forward as being the ‘facts’ of violence, but violence is an event not a condition. Violence is always an event, some say it is the most decisive kind of event possible.

Gil Elliot (1972, 15)

Approaching danger

Damages and risk

The understanding of hazards and disaster involves two broad areas of enquiry. We are concerned with actual damages, their incidence and distribution; and with how to explain them.

Damage is the empirical evidence of just how, where, and for whom danger is realised in harm. Death and injury, destroyed crops or buildings, and failed projects and emiseration are of foremost practical and humanitarian concern. Moreover, the processes or phenomena of damage tell us what needs to be addressed. Harm done is the unequivocal measure of the protection people did not have, but do require.

We pay attention to actual devastation and violence because they are more terrible, or at least, more final, than their possibility. When they occur, the community, civil society or technical plans have already failed. Efforts to respond to and reduce disaster pay, or should pay, most regard to its victims. In the places where disaster has occurred, our enquiries can be informed by the experience and concerns of survivors, those who have been ‘at the sharp end’ of these dangers. Safety measures, the limits of people's ability to cope, and the practices and performance of responsible agencies are truly tested in damaging events.

Second, however, there is the question of how people are placed in danger; the conditions that lead to disaster or may do so. What is it that promotes, limits or destroys public safety? In answering this I begin by rejecting a view of disasters, or most of them, as ‘bolts from the blue’ and so-called Acts of God; whether from unpredictable natural forces or human accident and failure. Earthquake and flood or oil spill and explosion may be the immediate or ‘proximate’ causes of disaster, and they may or may not be predicted. However, the severity and form of damages depend primarily upon the pre-existing state of society and its environmental relations. The argument supported here is that safety, and lack of it, are set up in the time before disaster happens. Security or danger are created and changed by human action. Thus, the assessment of danger goes well beyond actual damaging events. We find disasters being prepared by everyday life, in chronic areas of neglect and in disregarded implications of social change. This is not to say there are no surprises. Most people, even specialists in the conditions involved, often fail to anticipate the disasters that happen. But particular failures to anticipate future events are not the same as saying they are independent of preceding human activities and risk-taking choices.

The idea of ‘risk’ conveys a fuller sense of the field, in that it embraces exposure to dangers, adverse or undesirable prospects, and the conditions that contribute to danger. Thus, risk analysis considers, especially, potential and assessed dangers. The well-developed approach to insurable risks employs past damages to define profiles of danger attached to groups, activities and places having particular attributes. It provides a sense that risk resides in the fabric of everyday life or given projects. We do not have to wait for a disaster to say and to do something about it. If a certain material or design of building increases the fire hazard, replacing or changing it changes risk, hopefully with no fire.

For our purposes, this also directs attention to the human ecology and geography of conditions that promote or reduce safety. It suggests that risk is, in the broadest sense, continuously and socially constructed. It promotes an active and adaptive view of the responsibilities of human societies. That is how the notion of risk will be developed throughout the text. It is not, however, the only one in this field.

Assessing risks

Modern notions of risk developed especially from economic enterprise, or ‘speculative risk’, in which both favourable and adverse future results are at issue – benefits or profit, and losses. There is also a deep connection with gambling and games. Through the ‘theory of games’ it has been applied to some of the dangers of interest here, notably conflict situations. The problem of risk is also seen to apply to the chances of ‘winning’ and ‘losing’. However, questions of public safety and social security, of insurable and disaster risks, have generally focused on adverse outcomes, their likelihood and possibilities for prevention or mitigation.

The adverse side of financial and property risks is helpfully discussed in texts on insurance. Risk estimation from empirical evidence is used especially in the ‘actuarial’ approach of the insurance industry. This employs tables or profiles of risk for persons, property or enterprises based upon their past performance. Unfortunately, the approach is poorly developed for the more extreme and novel dangers that concern us. The use of census-type, mass statistical indicators, such as probability of death, an ‘accident’ or a certain financial loss, is useful in exploratory work and to establish broad comparative overviews of risk. It helps clarify issues and debates over national priorities and broad regional or social differences, as seen in those between countries and by gender. However, there is a danger of greatly oversimplifying problems, the way in which they arise, and the concerns of those at risk.

There is a struggle between a narrow, essentially quantitative, technical view of risk and a broad social and cultural one. The narrow view seeks to estimate the probability of a certain measurable (adverse) outcome in a specific system or population. The purpose is to predict the frequency of, say, deaths and injuries, accident or monetary loss, over time or space, and in a way commensurable with other risks. Some regard this type of risk analysis, or even more rigorous formulations, as the only ‘scientific’ or sound approach. It is well-suited to technical work for well-defined practices and in planned projects, major areas of concern in which specialised technical knowledge is essential. However, the damaging events and human losses that concern us most are primarily threats beyond, or that break out of, technical and institutional frameworks. Where public and environmental safety are involved, we have to consider substantive issues not amenable to narrow and detached definition. Indeed, in such cases, problems of equity and responsibility, values and expectations loom larger and must be taken into account.

Technical risk assessment seeks to lay a grid over all eventualities in quantitative, standardised terms that are permanent and independent of the experience and the event. It may be in terms of probabilities of occurrence, costs, indemnity as percentages of all losses, or tabulated against other risks. And perhaps these are sensible methods for establishing impartial government policy, viable insurance schemes, and the resources needed for emergency preparedness. But in a human ecology of civil responsibility, danger and disaster involve more considerations than such grids of calculation. The sources and realities of danger for the people and places affected are of another order. For the person who loses the possessions of a lifetime, a loved one or a limb, damage is unique and irreparable. For the community whose town is destroyed by an earthquake or a bombing raid, the difference between before and after the event, between this lost place and surviving places round about, is profound and irreversible. Meanwhile, in many contexts around the world, there are few or no standard and representative data suited to formal risk assessment. What there is can be misleading or irrelevant. The researcher who wishes, or is required, to present the problem in that way must begin on the gro...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Danger and modernity
• Part 1 Approaches to risk and disaster
• Part 2 Communities at risk, places of disaster
• Concluding remarks The perspective of ideas
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index