We have seen some interesting suggestions about measuring the scale of a
natural or human made disaster. Are there are physical as well as social
dimensions to a disaster, perhaps we need to thing of a composite index, in
which the weights would ave to be agreed upon by convention. Thus the
inflation index is a weighted index, based on an accepted basket of
consumption goods. The UN Human development Index is also a similar index.
It has weights for the adequacy of medicare, the prevelance of crime, are
pollution, quality of schools, etc.
Should we be thinking in terms of a composite index of disasters?
Mohammed Dore
At 08:10 AM 2/19/00 -0800, you wrote:
>I thank Mr. Heath for his comments and I am certainly very interested in
>further methods related to the normalisation of measurements in order to
>compare the physical and socio-economic effects of various disasters--and
>the translation back and forth between these.
>
>I am not entirely convinced by the example, however, because:
>
> (a) The spatial area of the disaster is mentioned and then
> ignored. Many methodologies exist for bringing
> spatial area (and other event properties and results) into
> the calculations and many advantages and disadvantages could
> be argued for doing so.
>
> (b) Both disasters affected Country Z, therefore the country's
> population becomes irrelevant to the calculation.
> The same result could be achieved simply by dividing
> 250,000 (the number of people affected by X) by
> 90,000 (the number of people affected by Y).
> A more effective example for the methodology proposed
> would be for disasters in different countries or
> otherwise delineated geographical areas.
>
> (c) My understanding of "risk" (which may very well be incorrect)
> is that it tends to indicate potential incidents, rather
> than what has actually happened. Thus, the calculation
> presented could indicate "relative risk" if X and Y were
> hypothetical, future possibilities, but not if they were
> events which had already happened, as implied in the problem
> statement. Rather pedantic, but possibly important,
> especially for communicating disaster risks and disaster
> results.
>
>Nonetheless, problems then exist with respect to the continual debate
>about what is an "affected" person. Should a person who is "affected" by
>being killed be weighted differently from "affected" friends and family of
>that person? How is a person "affected" by losing all property,
>possessions, and pets or by being displaced for two years compared with
>losing a child? When a culture is destroyed, a community relocated or not
>rebuilt, or livelihoods ruined, how can the "affected" collective (society
>or community) be measured against or combined with the "affected"
>individual(s)?
>
>To resolve such difficulties it seems that, as authors in the space have
>commented before, we end up returning to Mr. Heath's opening question:
>"Isn't the question of scale related to what one is trying to measure?"
>
>Thank you for your time,
>Ilan
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Mohammed Dore, D. Phil. (Oxon)
Professor of Economics
Brock University
St Catharines, Ontario
Canada L2S 3A1
Tel: +905 688 5550, ext 3578
Fax: +905 688 6388
Personal Fax: +1 435 309 9055
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Web site: http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~dore
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