Terminology

This terminology section help users to familiarise some of the technical terms used in the RISAP and also some of the process involved in the analysis carried out as part of the risk assessment. Hazard modelling and risk assessment is a specialise domain and was carried out by a multi-disciplinary team. We tried to keep the terminology simple as much as possible and tried to translate the analytical results into applied science for risk resilient development.

  • Acceptable risk:
    The level of potential losses that a society or community considers acceptable given existing social, economic, political, cultural, technical and environmental conditions.
  • Adaptation (related to disaster and climate change):
    The adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic change or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities. Adaptation can occur in autonomous fashion, for example through market changes, or as a result of intentional adaptation policies and plans. Many disaster risk reduction measures can directly contribute to better adaptation.
  • Annual Average Loss:
    Natural hazards become disasters when people's lives and livelihoods are destroyed.Natural disasters occur as a result of natural processes on Earth. There are a lot of different types of natural disasters that can occur, including floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, and tsunamis. In 2019, the number of natural disaster events had decreased slightly compared to the year before. Flooding generated the highest amount of economic loss that year. Devastatingly, in 2019, the Indian monsoon season floods caused to loss of over 1,750 deaths that year. As of 2019, the global average economic loss due to natural disaster events worldwide amounted to about 232 billion U.S. dollars annually.
  • Building code:
    A set of ordinances or regulations and associated standards intended to control aspects of the design, construction, materials, alteration and occupancy of structures that are necessary to ensure human safety and welfare, including resistance to collapse and damage.
  • Capacity Development:
    The process by which people, organizations and society systematically stimulate and develop their capacities over time to achieve social and economic goals, including through improvement of knowledge, skills, systems, and institutions. Capacity development is a concept that extends the term of capacity building to encompass all aspects of creating and sustaining capacity growth over time. It involves learning and various types of training, but also continuous efforts to develop institutions, political awareness, financial resources, technology systems, and the wider social and cultural enabling environment
  • Climate change:
    The Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines climate change as: a change in the state of the climate that can be identified (e.g., by using statistical tests) by changes in the mean and/or the variability of its properties, and that persists for an extended period, typically decades or longer. Climate change may be due to natural internal processes or external forcings, or to persistent anthropogenic changes in the composition of the atmosphere or in land uses.
  • Climate Variability:
    Climate Variability is defined as variations in the mean state and other statistics of the climate on all temporal and spatial scales, beyond individual weather events. A key difference between climate variability and change is in persistence of "anomalous conditions - when events that used to be rare occur more frequently, or vice-versa.
  • Coping capacity:
    The ability of people, organizations and systems, using available skills and resources, to face and manage adverse conditions, emergencies or disasters.
  • Critical facilities:
    The primary physical structures, technical facilities and systems which are socially, economically or operationally essential to the functioning of a society or community, both in routine circumstances and in the extreme circumstances of an emergency. For risk assessment the following exposure elements are considered as critical facilities : Education Facilities, Health Facilities, Government Offices, Police Stations and Fire Stations.
  • Critical Infrastructure:
    Critical infrastructure is a sub set of critical facilities. The critical infrastructure includes Sewage Lines, Sewage Treatment Plants, Potable water Lines, Water Treatment Plants, Over Head Tanks, Power Plants, Electric Lines, Power Sub Stations, Telecommunication Tower, Electric Poles and Transformer.
  • Damage function:
    Damage functions are used to represent the relation between the maximal damage and the damage factor. The experience gained from former flood events has shown, that there is a relation between flow depth or rather velocity and the expected loss. Normally, floods cause damages only in cellar and ground floor. This is why it doesn't make sense to calculate damage arising in the whole building. Therefore, a function/factor is needed which reduce the asset value of the appropriate land use type to the amount of actually expected loss.
  • Deterministic approach:
    Deterministic approaches are used to assess disaster impacts of a given hazard scenario. A deterministic model treats the probability of an event as finite. The deterministic approach typically models scenarios, where the input values are known and the outcome is observed. There are a number of problems with a deterministic approach, including the fact that it does not consider the full range of possible outcomes, and does not quantify the likelihood of each of these outcomes. Consequently, deterministic scenario planning may actually be underestimate the potential risk. Probabilistic approach overcome this short-fall.
  • Disaster:
    A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources.
  • Disaster risk:
    The potential disaster losses, in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets and services, which could occur to a particular community or a society over some specified future time period.
  • Disaster risk management:
    The systematic process of using administrative directives, organizations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies, policies and improved coping capacities in order to lessen the adverse impacts of hazards and the possibility of disaster.
  • Disaster risk reduction:
    The concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyse and manage the causal factors of disasters, including through reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness for adverse events.
  • Early warning system:
    The set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and organizations threatened by a hazard to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce the possibility of harm or loss.
  • Exceedance of Probability curve (EP curve):
    An Exceedance Probability curve (known as an EP curve) describes the probability that various levels of loss will be exceeded. An EP curve is generated by running the hazard catalogue against exposure and obtaining losses for each event and year. The events are then grouped by year (the reader should recall at this point that each simulated event has a simulated year to which it is associated) to determine the loss-causing events for each year. The total mean loss for each year is then found by adding the mean losses for each event together. It should also be noted that the mean of the convolved loss distribution for a year is the same as the sum of the mean losses of each event in that year. The losses are then sorted in descending order and plotted to give the exceedance probability and corresponding loss at that probability. The EP curve is the basis upon which insurers estimate their likelihood of experiencing various levels of loss.
  • Exposure:
    People, property, systems, or other elements present in hazard zones that are thereby subject to potential losses. Measures of exposure can include the number of people or types of assets in an area. These can be combined with the specific vulnerability of the exposed elements to any particular hazard to estimate the quantitative risks associated with that hazard in the area of interest.
  • Geological hazard:
    Geological process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage.
  • Hazard:
    A dangerous phenomenon, substance, human activity or condition that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage.
  • Hazard Susceptibility map:
    A hazard susceptibility map identifies areas which are subject to that particular hazard and is measured in relative terms from low to high.
  • Hydro meteorological hazard:
    Process or phenomenon of atmospheric, hydrological or oceanographic nature that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage.
  • Mitigation:
    The lessening or limitation of the adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters. The adverse impacts of hazards often cannot be prevented fully, but their scale or severity can be substantially lessened by various strategies and actions. Mitigation measures encompass engineering techniques and hazard-resistant construction as well as improved environmental policies and public awareness.
  • Natural hazard:
    Natural process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental damage.
  • Physical Vulnerability:
    Physical vulnerability is a functional relationship between process magnitude, the impacts on structural elements at risk and high exposed values. Physical vulnerability of buildings is defined by the expected degree of loss resulting from the impact of a certain event. Physical vulnerability includes the difficulty in access to water resources, means of communications, hospitals, police stations, fire brigades, roads, bridges and exits of a building or/an area, in case of disasters.
  • Preparedness:
    The knowledge and capacities developed by governments, professional response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from, the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions.
  • Prevention:
    The outright avoidance of adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters.
  • Probabilistic approach:
    Probabilistic risk is the chance of something adverse occurring. This method assesses the likelihood of an event(s) and it contains the idea of uncertainty because it incorporates the concept of randomness. In the context of disaster risk, probability refers to the frequency of occurrence or the return period of losses associated with hazardous events.
  • Probable Maximum Loss:
    In general, the probable maximum loss represents the actual return period of losses, hence it is used to provide information on how to address the different level of risk. Risks with high to medium probability of losses occurring can be addressed through interventions such as prospective and corrective risk management measures that is, codes and norms. Risks with low probability of high losses may be addressed through risk transfer mechanisms. Risks of very high losses with very low probability of occurrence are "residual" risks that decision-makers may not be able to address nor transfer. The decision on where to set the level of this "residual risk" can be economic but also political, resulting in what is sometimes called as "acceptable risk".
  • Public awareness:
    The extent of common knowledge about disaster risks, the factors that lead to disasters and the actions that can be taken individually and collectively to reduce exposure and vulnerability to hazards.
  • Recovery:
    The restoration, and improvement where appropriate, of facilities, livelihoods and living conditions of disaster-affected communities, including efforts to reduce disaster risk factors.
  • Residual risk:
    The risk that remains in unmanaged form, even when effective disaster risk reduction measures are in place, and for which emergency response and recovery capacities must be maintained.
  • Resilience:
    The ability of a system, community or society exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions.
  • Response:
    The provision of emergency services and public assistance during or immediately after a disaster in order to save lives, reduce health impacts, ensure public safety and meet the basic subsistence needs of the people affected.
  • Return Period:
    A return period, also known as a recurrence interval or repeat interval, is an average time or an estimated average time between events such as earthquakes, floods, landslides, or a river discharge flows to occur. It is a statistical measurement typically based on historic data over an extended period, and is used usually for risk analysis. Examples include deciding whether a project should be allowed to go forward in a zone of a certain risk or designing structures to withstand events with a certain return period. The following analysis assumes that the probability of the event occurring does not vary over time and is independent of past events.

  • Risk Assessment:
    A methodology to determine the nature and extent of risk by analysing potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that together could potentially harm exposed people, property, services, livelihoods and the environment on which they depend. Risk assessments (and associated risk mapping) include: a review of the technical characteristics of hazards such as their location, intensity, frequency and probability; the analysis of exposure and vulnerability including the physical social, health, economic and environmental dimensions; and the evaluation of the effectiveness of prevailing and alternative coping capacities in respect to likely risk scenarios. This series of activities is sometimes known as a risk analysis process.
  • Risk management:
    The systematic approach and practice of managing uncertainty to minimize potential harm and loss. Risk management comprises risk assessment and analysis, and the implementation of strategies and specific actions to control, reduce and transfer risks. It is widely practiced by organizations to minimise risk in investment decisions and to address operational risks such as those of business disruption, production failure, environmental damage, social impacts and damage from fire and natural hazards. Risk management is a core issue for sectors such as water supply, energy and agriculture whose production is directly affected by extremes of weather and climate.
  • Risk transfer:
    The process of formally or informally shifting the financial consequences of particular risks from one party to another whereby a household, community, enterprise or state authority will obtain resources from the other party after a disaster occurs, in exchange for ongoing or compensatory social or financial benefits provided to that other party. Insurance is a well-known form of risk transfer, where coverage of a risk is obtained from an insurer in exchange for ongoing premiums paid to the insurer. Risk transfer can occur informally within family and community networks where there is reciprocal expectations of mutual aid by means of gifts or credit, as well as formally where governments, insurers, multi-lateral banks and other large risk-bearing entities establish mechanisms to help cope with losses in major events. Such mechanisms include insurance and re-insurance contracts, catastrophe bonds, contingent credit facilities and reserve funds, where the costs are covered by premiums, investor contributions, interest rates and past savings, respectively.
  • Social vulnerability:
    Social vulnerability refers to the socioeconomic and demographic factors that affect the resilience of communities.
  • Stochastic event scenarios:
    All natural events are stochastic phenomenon. "Stochastic" means being or having a random variable. A stochastic model is a tool for estimating probability distributions of potential outcomes by allowing for random variation in one or more inputs over time. The random variation is usually based on fluctuations observed in historical data for a selected period using standard time-series techniques. Distributions of potential outcomes are derived from a large number of simulations (stochastic projections) which reflect the random variation in the input(s).
  • Transport infrastructure:
    Critical infrastructure is a sub set of critical facilities. The transport infrastructure includes Roads, Bridges, Tunnels, Railway Lines, Railway Stations, Airports/helipad.
  • Vulnerability:
    The characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard.

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