Lecture Notes: Disaster Vulnerability and Resilience Session 6 Lecturer: Ragnar Loefstedt. King's College, London. Risk Communication Introduction I. What is Risk? a. The probability of an adverse event occurring? II. What is Risk Perception? a. How people view that probability and the way their view differs from the actual probability b. Began in the 1940s with Gilbert White (geographer in University of Chicago) whose PhD on floods discovered an important paradox: though the number of floods was decreasing and the money spent on flood protection was increasing, people were claiming more flood damage. i. Discovered that people like being near floodplains. Why? 1. Better land for farming (flat, better soil) 2. Picturesque landscape 3. Availability of water 4. Transportation 5. Recreation ii. Because flood protection had increased, people felt safer and would take larger risks on the floodplain. iii. Begins the Chicago school of thought on Natural Hazards 1. B. Kates 2. I. Burton 3. Environment as Hazard (1995) c. Why don’t people worry about natural hazards? i. The benefits outweigh the costs ii. They grow accustomed to the risk and they accept it. d. How are natural hazards different from technological hazards i. Natural hazards are perceived as being unavoidable whereas technological hazards are perceived as being avoidable ii. Technological hazards are acts of humans; natural hazards are acts of “God.” iii. Information gap: technological hazards are not well understood, but natural hazards are familiar. e. Is there a problem with the model? i. Many people have no choice about where they live (especially in the developing world). ii. Poor/Rich dichotomy iii. Watts: Silent violence: In Africa, growth of cash crops (encouraged by the West) has caused massive famine.1. Other underlying causes of famine: a. International/national/local politics b. Climate: “Political ecology” Piers Blaikie f. Chauncy Starr (engineer): Voluntary/Involuntary Risk i. Voluntary: using cell-phones, relatively high risk ii. Involuntary: placement of cell-phone towers in proximity, relatively low risk iii. People are 1000 times more likely to accept a voluntary risk than an involuntary risk (of the same class). g. Paul Slovic, B. Fischhoff, S. Lichtenstein (statisticians): h. Kahneman and ???: heuristics and biases (Psychometric Paradigm) has influenced the shaping of the risk-management field: i. Voluntary/involuntary ii. Natural/technological iii. Control/non-control iv. Familiar/unfamiliar v. No children/children vi. Non-reproductive/reproductive vii. Catastrophic potential: high-probability low consequence risk (cars, small earthquakes)/low-probability high-consequence risk (tsunami, airplane crash, terrorist attack) 1. Car accident annual mortality (45,000-50,000 deaths per year) is much higher than deaths by airplane accidents (2,000). 2. Technological failure vs. human failure 3. Media amplification has a huge impact on how people perceive each risk: a. Number of people who are impacted at once b. Survivor stories viii. Male/female (females are more risk-averse) ix. Whites/minorities (minorities are more risk-averse) – how much is this a proxy for poverty? 1. Thomas Freedman; The Lexus and the Olive Tree i. “Optimistic Bias”: people think they are going to win/survive/etc. j. Risk-risk Tradeoff : Mitigating one risk leaves population vulnerable to another risk. John D. Graham & Jonathan Bert Wiener. Risk vs. Risk (1995) III. Risk Communication a. What is risk communication? How people who understand risk communicate the actual probability to bring risk perception in line with actual risk. b. A number of academics became high-profile consultants who educated industry about how people perceive risk. i. Top-Down Risk Communication: ineffective (no reason to believe in the individual proposing the riskii. Dialogue Risk Communication: It can work if people believe that there is a real dialogue and that it is not just a façade. iii. Bottom-up Risk Communication: when a stakeholder communicates up the chain to make a local issue and national/international issue. c. Problems with Risk Communication: i. Narrative: Risk communication is focused on data and numbers. Does not do much to communicate a meaningful risk to people. ii. Social amplification vis-à-vis social attenuation: 1. Amplified: 9-11, plane crashes, nuclear accidents 2. Attenuated (taboo): Suicide (worried about copycats), STDs, iii. Trust: can explain 50% of risk-perception, and it is much easier to lose trust than to gain trust. Direct correlation between high trust and low risk-perception and low-trust and high-perceived risk. Risk Communication in Action (Case Studies): I. Barsebäck (Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden): a. Accident: insulation material fell into a valve and blocked it for 25 minutes, had it taken longer, it could have caused a core meltdown b. Regulating body shut down 6 of 12 Swedish nuclear power stations (based on the company’s own safety assessment) and required a number of changes to improve safety before they could reopen. c. Danes like nuclear power (don’t want any plants since Chernobyl), have no plants, Sweden export extra power to Denmark, i. In January 1993, Seamark wants to open a plant in Denmark. Defense minister proposed declaring a war on Sweden and taking back a province lost in a war. ii. Sweden threatens to cover Denmark in fermented herring. iii. Danes circle plant with smelly cheese? d. Swedes who aren’t worried about nuclear power overwhelmingly say that they trust Swedish industry. i. Swedish goods are known for being high quality ii. Utility companies handled the incident very well. 1. Admitted their fault, studied what happened, and made an effort to repair trust II. BSL-4 Facilities in Galveston, Texas a. University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) determined the need for BSL-4 in their area in 1995. i. UTMB provides healthcare for prisoners; need to look at BSL-4 pathogens to provide the care. ii. Imported a team of experts from Yale University to Galveston. b. Recognized the need for effective public engagement strategy i. Began working with CDC (Center for Disease Control) communications expertsii. Strategy included: 1. Focus groups, internal and external 2. Internal meetings 3. Dialogue meetings with community leaders and local media a. Explain in detail over a whole day why Galveston