Fs120: Risks, Vulnerabilities, and Hazards

Risks, Hazards, and Vulnerabilities

Kaitlyn Lippincott

FS120-01

Professor Bingaman

May 27, 2016

Kaplan University

Risk, Hazards, and Vulnerabilities

Emergency Management focuses on plans to progress programs and tools in order to understand the risks, hazards, emergencies, and vulnerabilities that areas face when they are hit with disasters. When focusing on such aspects, it is important to focus on knowing the difference of each of these points and how they work alone before understanding how they work together. “Vulnerability, resilience, hazard, risk, damage, and loss are the key concepts referred to in the literature on natural disasters” (Modica, Zoboli, 2016). The first and most important part of the process is determining and understanding what the current situation is.

Risks are a huge factor to take into consideration when dealing with disasters. Alone, risks have their own areas that must be focused on to get a better understanding. They are a combination of hazards and the potential of harm. Emergency management focuses on plans to reduce the risks of emergencies within disasters and lower the risk of fatalities. Risk can be social or it can be economic. These factors can be seen apart or together when damage is done. Risks are the first thing that should be focused on in order to understand different situations. It is easier to understand hazards and vulnerabilities if the risks are understood first. It is also important to understand the risks of implementing different disaster or hazard protocols.

Vulnerabilities are an important focus in order to understand the obstacles of disasters. “Vulnerability can be used “to describe inherent characteristics of a system that create the potential for harm but are independent of the probabilistic risk of occurrence of any particular hazard or extreme even” (Modica, Zoboli, 2016). These are what determines where improvements need to be made and what is already working. Managing...