The Long Shadow of Human Generated Geohazards: Risks and Crises
Oct 19th, 2016
The Long Shadow of Human Generated Geohazards: Risks and Crises is the title of a chapter by C. Oboni & F. Oboni of the book entitled Geohazards Caused by Human Activity (ISBN 978-953-51-4765-7, Arvin Farid, Ph.D., P.E., Associate Professor Civil Engineering, Boise State University, Idaho, USA, Editor).
The book is due to be e-published soon by Intech with the goal to provide free online access to research.
The Long Shadow of Human Generated Geohazards: Risks and Crises
The purpose of the chapter is to focus attention on the “damage and risk” side of the geohazard (GHZ) phenomena instead than on their generating processes.
Indeed, assessors often neglect or oversimplify damage evaluations in predictive studies. As a result they poorly understand risks and often consider them as the mere expression of the probability or likelihood of an adverse event.
In the chapter real-life case provide the background to discuss among other subjects:
- technical glossary of risk, damages, crises,
- multi-dimensional consequences analysis,
- definition of risk tolerance.
The Chapter also focuses on ethical (geo-ethical) issues linked to GHZs caused by Human Activities as well as mitigation decisions and side effects.
Additionally the discussion will include the sometimes excessive, sometimes lacking (blindness) perception of risks by the public, corporate and public officers. We will discuss the root cause of some odd human behaviour when facing risks (biases) like, for example, the survivor bias.
GHZs cast a long and often misunderstood shadow on human activities, development and survival. Modelling consequences and better evaluating risks and crises are needed to alleviate human and environmental suffering. Their application will additionally foster sustainable development.
An history of Riskope’s free online sharing of information
Riskope has a long history of free online sharing of information through our website.
You can find selected freely downloadable publications by Riskope here:
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Information on our 2007 book is available here.
Tagged with: Consequences, crises, glossary, interdependencies, risk, social, tolerance
Category: Consequences, Crisis management, Risk analysis
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