Can we measure an ethical component in risk perception and disaster preparedness practices?

Intensity of impacts of natural disasters is increasing with climate and ecological changes spread. Frequency of disasters is increasing, and recurrence of catastrophes characterizing by essential spatial heterogeneity. Distribution of losses is fundamentally non-linear and reflects complex interrelation of natural, social and environmental factor in the changing world on multi scale range. We faced with new types of risks, which require a comprehensive security concept.

We need quantitatively estimate a social factors influence to disaster damage. It will be scientific support for decision making in disaster relief and preparedness, built on responsible, ethical base, taking into account human dimension.

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For period 1960 – 2012 in Ukraine 894 natural disasters were selected and analyzed. General trends have been detected; period 1991 – 2010 was selected for detailed analysis as the period with the most reliable statistics validated by satellite. Socio-economical data has been analyzed on the sample of 42 disasters, including 11 most affecting events. List of major disasters includes 6 floods, 3 storms, 1 cold wave, and 1 epidemic. Total losses of most affecting events is about 1,64 billions of EURO, 2.698.797 persons were affected, and 368 people were killed. Analysis was aimed to influence of risk perception to the damage function.

The distribution presented is demonstrates essential increasing of disaster frequency, as well as the data analyzed shows the increasing of the direct losses. Losses increasing connected both with registered increasing of frequency and intensity of disasters, and with increasing of the damaged infrastructure cost. To analyze damage distribution in the context of economic development the Index of Damage (IoD) was calculated.

This index was calculated using evident algorithm: direct losses related to per capita GDP.

The distribution presented demonstrates that relative natural disasters damage (calculated per 1000 km²) during 1990 is slightly increasing, which is probably connected with impact of climate change. Common trend in world and Europe demonstrates decreasing of IoD, which connected with economic grows (increasing of economic sustainability toward catastrophic events) and successful implementation of risk management strategies. At the same time on the territory of Ukraine since 1980’s and especially since 1990’s IoD is increasing dramatically. It connected with economical degradation and absence of adequate systemic strategies of risk management.

In framework of most common, and most comprehensive case the risk can be presented as the superposition of interrelated distribution function and damage function. Distribution function is more “physical” and describes an impact of expanded disaster; damage function describes distribution of damaged assets: infrastructure, people, natural features, etc.

Basing on the prospect theory  and decision making under uncertainty on cognitive bias and handling of risk, we propose to modify a damage function. Modified damage function includes an awareness function, which is the superposition of risk perception function and function of education and log-term experience.

Disaster data were analyzed using modified kernel-based nonlinear principal component analysis (KPCA) algorithm. As the result the spatially and temporally regularized distributions with normalized reliability were obtained.

On the figures below presented averaged distribution of affect by education caused by most valuable natural disasters in Ukraine 1991 – 2012.

Unfortunately as it usual in disaster study, the sample is essentially limited: this data is not highly reliable. Average uncertainty is about 14% for disaster statistics, and about 20% for demographic data.

Risk component caused by education (and indirectly age) is closely connected with economic parameters, such as income per capita. Surveys show that these interrelations are varied and significantly heterogeneous spatially and temporally.

On the figures below the smoothed distributions of disasters affect depends of income are presented.

Analysis of available data using equations (3) – (4) demonstrates interconnected influence of education and long-term experience (education function) on one hand, and short-term information on the other hand (risk perception function) to damage function as the measure of vulnerability toward disasters.

As it follow from figure presented, risk perception function is about 9-18% of awareness function depends of education, age, income and social status of people. Also it was estimated that fraction of awareness function in damage function, and so in function of risk is about 21-49%.

It means that no less than 7-11% of direct losses depend of short-term responsible behavior of “information agents”: social activity of experts, scientists, correct discussions on ethical issues in geo-sciences and media. Other 8-10% of losses are connected with level of public and professional education. This area is also should be field of responsibility of geo-scientists.

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So, cost of systemic education and long-term preparedness work is no less than 10-15 % of total catastrophic losses, and cost of responsible information and policy making is from 8% up to 20% (in case of major disasters).

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