The Hazard Management Cycle

• Hazard Management Cycle


  A cycle because hazard events keep happening, so efforts to prepare for them or mitigate their effects are ongoing
• Key Terms


  • Preparation
  • Response
  • Recovery
  • Mitigation
• Preparation


  Planning how to respond to a hazard (e.g. making sure there are warning systems in place or educating people about how to evacuate safely)
• Response


  How people react when a disaster occurs (e.g. emergency services rescuing people or evacuating people from the danger zone)
• Recovery


  Getting the area back to normal (e.g. repairing or rebuilding houses, restoring services such as electricity and medical care)
• Mitigation


  Aims to minimise the impacts of future disasters (e.g. building flood defences or fire resistant roofs). Mitigation can happen before a hazard occurs or afterwards when the area is recovering
• Hazard models are useful, but the unpredictability of hazards makes the models less effective at accurately representing human responses to hazards
• Questions to evaluate the effectiveness of hazard models

  • Can they be applied to every hazard?
  • Does the model take every aspect of the hazard into account?
  • Is there a time-frame?
  • Could the model be less vague/include more steps that can be applied to all hazards?
  • Does the model present hazards currently?