3 Risk and vulnerability analysis in the context of emergency management
Risk and vulnerability analyses already play important roles in the emergency management process in many countries. As was mentioned previously, according to the Swedish legislation, for example, it is mandatory for municipalities, county councils and authorities to conduct risk and vulnerability analyses. This chapter aims to give an overview of emergencies and the role that risk and vulnerability analyses play, or potentially can play, in an emergency management context. The chapter ends with presenting a model that aims to provide a very generic picture of emergencies in order to illustrate what factors influence the occurrence of emergencies, how emergencies evolve and the final outcome of them. Implicitly, thus, the model gives insight regarding what risk and vulnerability analyses need to take into account in order to provide an as complete picture as possible.
3.1 Some notes on the concepts of accidents,
The concept of accidents is closely akin to the concept of emergencies; however, still quite distinct from it. Hollnagel defines an accident as “a short, sudden, and unexpected event or occurrence that results in an unwanted or undesirable outcome” (Hollnagel, 2004). Although the concept of accidents and the area of accident investigation and analysis can provide important insight to emergency management it is somewhat to narrow in scope to be directly applicable here. First, an accident is always seen as an effect of human activities rather than the occurrence of for example a natural event. Secondly, it is clear that in the area of accident modelling and analysis the greatest interest is devoted to identifying the causes and conditions leading up to the occurrence of some critical/accidental event, such as the release of hazardous materials. The interest is not as much with the response to the release, such as how emergency response agencies is acting or how the general public behaves, which is often of interest in crisis and emergency management. So while accident modelling and analysis can provide important insight to emergency management research and practice, it only covers a part of what is interesting for emergency management. Thus, what accident modelling do not generally aim to capture, but which is of great interest in the present thesis, is the fact that the ultimate outcome of a hazardous event, such as the accidental release of toxic gas, in many cases to a large extent is determined by how the event is responded to.
The concept of crises is also common in the academic literature. A crisis is often said to refer to “a serious threat to the basic structures or the fundamental values and norms of a social system, which – under time pressure and highly uncertain circumstances – necessitates making critical decisions” (Boin, 2004). Thus, in order for a crisis to arise three conditions have to be met: there has to be an imminent threat to core values, there has to be large uncertainties associated with possible actions and there has to be a sense of urgency associated with actions1 (McConnell and Drennan, 2006; Boin and 't Hart, 2007). Disaster, on the other hand, predominantly refers to the devastating outcome of an event, rather than to the dynamic processes being referred to in the concept of crises. A crisis does not have to develop into a disaster or a catastrophe, since if it is managed successfully it could develop into only a minor incident. A disaster can therefore be said to be a
“crisis with a bad ending” (Boin and McConnell, 2007).
1 A crisis can be said to differ from the broader concepts of threats and hazards in that a crisis has entered an “acute phase”, requiring very quick actions, i.e. a crisis is a hazard or threat that has materialised or is very soon about to materialise. This view is also brought forward by Quarantelli, Lagadec et al. (2007).
The relation between crisis and emergency management is most difficult to clarify.
In many cases the concepts are treated as synonyms and most often they are at least grossly overlapping. However, subtle differences between the concepts can sometimes be discerned, see for example CCMD (2004). Responding to an emergency often involves prompt actions to try to minimise the harm on people and/or the environment (i.e. a physical harm). It often deals with rather concrete threats and consequences and do not necessarily involve a great deal of uncertainties. Crisis management on the other hand involves a higher degree of subjectivity: if it is perceived, for example by the public or by decision-makers, that core values are seriously threatened then there is a crisis; or as Boin and ‘t Hart argue: “[p]hysical facts, numbers, and other seemingly objective indicators are important factors, but they are not decisive” (Boin and 't Hart, 2007). In addition, often crisis management deals with vaguer types of consequences, such as lack of trust in social institutions, and the uncertainties are always high. To give a concrete example of the difference between emergencies and crises, consider the Estonia disaster that occurred in the Baltic Sea in 1994. Due to the capsizing of the ship an emergency response was initiated in order to save as many human lives as possible.
However, after the acute phase of the emergency had ended, i.e. where no more lives could be saved, a crisis emanated from the fact that there where doubts regarding whether investigations where carried out appropriately or whether facts where hidden from the public. As such, an emergency can escalate into a crisis.
Although, the qualitative and quantitative differences between emergencies, accidents, disasters, crises and catastrophes proposed by many researchers are acknowledged in the present thesis, it is argued that it is often difficult to draw any clear-cut distinctions regarding which events and phenomena that fall into the respective category – and often an event fits into several of the categories. What is needed in the present thesis is a concept that provides a broad view of the processes that lead to harm and the activities that is focussed on preventing the harm from occurring or alleviating it. Alexander’s view of emergencies, referred to above, is believed to provide such a broad view. In what follows, therefore, the term emergency management will be used to refer to the activities taken prior to, during and after the occurrence of emergencies, that is concerned with mitigation of, preparedness for, response to and recovery from emergencies.