| Risk is a concept used to describe future potential outcomes of certain
actions or events. Within the project "CEDIM – Risk Map Germany –
Man-made Hazards" it is intended to develop methods for assessing and
mapping the risk due to different human-induced hazards. This is a task that
has not been successfully performed for Germany so far. Concepts of
catastrophe modelling are employed including the spatial modelling of
hazard, the compilation of different kinds of exposed elements, the
estimation of their vulnerability and the direct loss potential in terms of
human life and health.
The paper is divided in two sections: First, an analytic framework for
assessing the broad spectrum of human-induced risks is introduced. This
approach is then applied for three important types of human-induced hazards
that are representative for a whole class of hazards: Accidents due to
nuclear power plants (NPP) or air traffic, and terrorism.
For the analysis of accidents, risk is measured with respect to getting
injured or dying when living in certain buffer zones around hazard
locations. NPP hazard expert knowledge is used and supplemented with
observations on aging effects leading to a proprietary index value for the
risk. Air traffic risk is modelled as an area related phenomenon based on
available accident statistics leading to an expected value of risk.
Terrorism risk is assessed by the attraction certain elements (like
embassies in the case of conventional threats) display in the eye of
potential aggressors. For non-conventional targets like football games, a
detailed approach measuring their susceptibility to different kinds of
attacks within predefined scenarios was developed; this also allows a
ranking of attack modes. |