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The Risks from Flooding: Which Risks and Whose Perception?
Author(s) -
GREEN C.H.,
TUNSTALL S.M.,
FORDHAM M.H.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-7717.1991.tb00456.x
Subject(s) - flooding (psychology) , poison control , injury prevention , suicide prevention , risk perception , human factors and ergonomics , occupational safety and health , perception , forensic engineering , risk assessment , environmental health , medical emergency , risk analysis (engineering) , environmental science , engineering , computer security , business , medicine , psychology , computer science , neuroscience , psychotherapist , pathology
Four main groups are considered in relation to the risk from flooding: the engineers involved in the design of flood alleviation schemes, emergency planners, the public, including both the population at risk from flooding and the rest of the population who will bear all or most of the cost of flood alleviation schemes and the researchers, such as geographers and economists concerned with flood hazards and scheme appraisal. It is argued that these different groups vary significantly in their selection and definition of risks from flooding as a focus of concern and that their definition of risk influences their expectations about future events and the appropriate response to those events. But the different groups share two tendencies: the expectation that the future will be a replication of the past; and the neglect of “uncertain uncertainties” in favour of known uncertainties of risk.