A risk index due to natural hazards based on the expected annual loss

Mauro Niño (), Miguel Jaimes and Eduardo Reinoso

Natural Hazards: Journal of the International Society for the Prevention and Mitigation of Natural Hazards, 2015, vol. 79, issue 1, 215-236

Abstract: This study proposes a risk index (RI) to identify the potential areas at national, sub-national and local levels that may suffer losses to natural hazards, taking into account the expected physical damage to the structures. The quantitative measure of the risk is the expected annual loss obtained as a result of the formal probabilistic estimation of structural damage. To estimate RI, a computational system that takes into account the occurrence of all possible events and its exceedance rates for a given hazard and the characteristics of the local construction is employed. Although losses can be obtained for individual structures in percent, the proposed RI establishes a scale of qualitative levels: Very Low, Low, Medium, High and Very High. RI is transparent, robust and representative of the risk, and can be used as a first sound approach in order to better use resources to carry out site- and building-specific studies for the regions at the highest risk. As a case study of RI, three natural hazards (seismic, hurricane and flood) for dwellings located in areas of Mexico are shown. The benefits of this approach are two: (1) to set risk results as a standard for decision-making in fields other than financial ones, and (2) a straight use of these risk results to prioritize resources at areas (or buildings or any other asset) according to the highest or lowest risk result, in a way that may be easier to communicate to decision-makers even if they are not familiar with formal risk studies. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Risk index; Risk distribution; Structural vulnerability; Geographic information systems; Hazard; Loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1007/s11069-015-1837-0

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