1-Flash flood hazards
Flash flood in Saudi Arabia becomes one of the most repeated hazards that has
occurred in the last few years. It causes several damages on many different location in
Saudi such as Riyadh, Makkah, and Jeddah. Poor Infrastructure management is the
main reason that increase the risk of flash flood in Saudi.
2- Human-related risks:
As we know, Saudi Arabia has encountered various terrorist attacks that caused lots of
damages to society and the country. Identifying this type of hazard is vital to prevent
any further attacks.
3-Motor Vehicle Crashes
Car accidents in Saudi Arabia are manifest and dangerous due to the high number of
injuries and deaths.
4-Epidemic/ disease outbreak.
Disease outbreaks happen everywhere around the world. This is important to consider
as one of the top hazards that affect Saudi Arabia because of mass gathering from
around the world in both Ramadan and Haj seasons.
5-Dust storms
Dust storm is a serious natural hazard that Saudi cities face in the central and eastern
region every year. When dust storms lands, it reduces visibility which can cause traffic
accidents as well as affecting people suffering from lung diseases.
References:
Al-Bassam, A. M., Zaidi, F. K., & Hussein, M. T. (2014). Natural hazards in Saudi Arabia. Extreme
Natural Events, Disaster Risks and Societal Implications, 243-251.
Alamri, Y. A. (2010). Emergency management in Saudi Arabia: Past, present and future. Un.
Christchurch report, New Zealand, 21.
Of
3
Risk and Vulnerability
Introduction
Risk is an unavoidable part of life, affecting all people without exception, irrespective of geographic or
socioeconomic limits. Each choice we make as individuals and as a society involves specific, often
unknown, factors of risk, and full risk avoidance generally is impossible.
On the individual level, each person is primarily responsible for managing the risks he faces as he
sees fit. For some risks, management may be obligatory, as with automobile speed limits and seatbelt
usage. For other personal risks, such as those associated with many recreational sports, individuals are
free to decide the degree to which they will reduce their risk exposure, such as wearing a ski helmet or
other protective clothing. Similarly, the risk of disease affects humans as individuals, and as such is
generally managed by individuals. By employing risk reduction techniques for each life hazard, individuals effectively reduce their vulnerability to those hazard risks.
As a society or a nation, citizens collectively face risks from a range of large-scale hazards.
Although these hazards usually result in fewer total injuries and fatalities over the course of each year
than individually faced hazards, they are considered much more significant because they have the
potential to result in many deaths, injuries, or damages in a single event or series of events. In fact,
some of these hazards are so great that, if they occurred, they would result in such devastation that
the capacity of local response mechanisms would be overwhelmed. This, by definition, is a disaster.
For these large-scale hazards, many of which were identified in Chapter 2, vulnerability is most effectively reduced by disaster management efforts collectively, as a society. For most of these hazards, it is
the government’s responsibility to manage, or at least guide the management of, hazard risk reduction
measures. And when these hazards do result in disaster, it is likewise the responsibility of governments
to respond to them and aid in the following recovery.
This text focuses on the management of international disasters, which are those events that overwhelm an individual nation or region’s ability to respond, thereby requiring the assistance of the international body of response agencies. This chapter, therefore, focuses not upon individual, daily risks
and vulnerabilities, but on the risks and vulnerabilities that apply to the large-scale hazards like those
discussed in Chapter 2.
Two Components of Risk
Chapter 1 defined risk as the interaction of a hazard’s consequences with its probability or likelihood.
This is its definition in virtually all documents associated with risk management. Clearly defining the
meaning of “risk” is important, because the term often carries markedly different meanings for
139
140
INTRODUCTION TO INTERNATIONAL DISASTER MANAGEMENT
different people (Jardine & Hrudey, 1997). One of the simplest and most common definitions of risk,
preferred by many risk managers, is displayed by the equation stating that risk is the likelihood of an
event occurring multiplied by the consequence of that event, were it to occur: RISK ¼ LIKELIHOOD
CONSEQUENCE (Ansell & Wharton 1992).
Likelihood
“Likelihood” can be given as a probability or a frequency, whichever is appropriate for the analysis
under consideration. Variants of this definition appear in virtually all risk management documents.
“Frequency” refers to the number of times an event will occur within an established sample size over
a specific period of time. Quite literally, it tells how frequently an event occurs. For instance, the frequency of auto accident deaths in the United States averages around 1 per 81 million miles driven
(Dubner & Levitt, 2006).
In contrast to frequency, “probability” refers to single-event scenarios. Its value is expressed as a
number between 0 and 1, with 0 signifying a zero chance of occurrence and 1 signifying certain occurrence. Using the auto accident example, in which the frequency of death is 1 per 81 million miles
driven, we can say that the probability of a random person in the United States dying in a car accident
equals 0.000001 if he was to drive 81 miles.
Disaster managers use this formula for risk to determine the likelihood and the consequences of
each hazard according to a standardized method of measurement. The identified hazard risks thus can
be compared to each other and ranked according to severity. (If risks were analyzed and described
using different methods and/or terms of reference, it would be very difficult to accurately compare
them later in the hazards risk management process.)
This ranking of risks, or “risk evaluation,” allows disaster managers to determine which treatment (mitigation and preparedness) options are the most effective, most appropriate, and provide
the most benefit per unit of cost. Not all risks are equally serious and risk analysis can provide a
clearer idea of these levels of seriousness.
Without exception governments have a limited amount of funds available to manage the risks
they face. While the treatment of one hazard may be less expensive or more easily implemented than
the treatment of another, cost and ease alone may not be valid reasons to choose a treatment option.
Hazards that have great consequences (in terms of lives lost or injured or property damaged or
destroyed) and/or occur with great frequency pose the greatest overall threat. Considering the limited
funds, disaster managers generally should recommend first treating those risks that pose the greatest
threat. Fiscal realities often drive this analytic approach, resulting in situations in which certain
hazards in the community’s overall risk profile are mitigated, while others are not addressed at all.
The goal of risk analysis is to establish a standard and therefore comparable measurement of the
likelihood and consequence of every identified hazard. The many ways by which likelihoods and consequences are determined are divided into two categories of analysis: quantitative and qualitative.
Quantitative analysis uses mathematical and/or statistical data to derive numerical descriptions of risk.
Qualitative analysis uses defined terms (words) to describe and categorize the likelihood and consequences of risk. Quantitative analysis gives a specific data point (e.g., dollars, probability, frequency,
or number of injuries/fatalities), while qualitative analysis allows each qualifier to represent a range
of possibilities. It is often cost and time prohibitive, and often not necessary, to find the exact quantitative measures for the likelihood and consequence factors of risk. Qualitative measures, however, are
much easier to determine and require less time, money and, most important, expertise to conduct.
Chapter 3 • Risk and Vulnerability
141
For this reason, it is often the preferred measure of choice. The following section provides a general
explanation of how these two types of measurements apply to the likelihood and consequence components of risk.
Quantitative Representation of Likelihood
As previously stated, likelihood can be derived as either a frequency or a probability. A quantitative
system of measurement exists for each. For frequency, this number indicates the number of times a
hazard is expected to result in an actual event over a chosen time frame: 4 times per year, 1 time
per decade, 10 times a month, and so on. Probability measures the same data, but the outcome is
expressed as a measure between 0 and 1, or as a percentage between 0% and 100%, representing
the chance of occurrence. For example, a 50-year flood has a 1/50 chance of occurring in any given
year, or a probability of 2% or 0.02. An event that is expected to occur two times in the next 3 years
has a 0.66 probability each year, or a 66% chance of occurrence.
Qualitative Representation of Likelihood
Likelihood can also be expressed using qualitative measurement, using words to describe the chance of
occurrence. Each word or phrase has a designated range of possibilities attached to it. For instance,
events could be described as follows:
l
Certain: >99% chance of occurring in a given year (1 or more occurrences per year)
l
Likely: 50–99% chance of occurring in a given year (1 occurrence every 1–2 years)
l
Possible: 5–49% chance of occurring in a given year (1 occurrence every 2–20 years)
l
Unlikely: 2–5% chance of occurring in a given year (1 occurrence every 20–50 years)
l
Rare: 1–2% chance of occurring in a given year (1 occurrence every 50–100 years)
l
Extremely rare:
Purchase answer to see full
attachment