Is there a trade-off between households’ precautions,mitigations and public protection for flood risk?

This paper evaluates willingness-to-pay (WTP) for flood insurance and floodgate installation in Tainan, Taiwan, and finds that household flood precaution (observing the water level) has a minor effect in terms of increasing the WTP for flood insurance, rather than decreasing it. The reason for this is that people who have public flood protection nearby do not lower their WTP for floodgate and insurance, and those who live near the water source of floods and exhibit precautionary behavior have higher risk perceptions and intend to pay more. The adopted mitigation (having sandbags or other barriers) will not affect the intention to further mitigate or buy insurance. This also means that adverse selection in relation to flood insurance is not serious in the flood-prone area of Tainan. Households may be aware of the limitation of public flood protection though the precautionary behavior, and found that flood insurance can compensate for most of the flood damage.     

公众认知、感知价值与灾害气象服务满意度的关系研究——以深圳市3029份《公众气象安全认知度调查问卷》数据为例

目前从公众认知水平的角度出发,评价灾害气象服务满意度的文献较少。该文创新性地提出了公众气象认知这一概念,以深圳市3 029份公众气象安全认知度调查数据为例,采用结构方程模型,评估了公众认知、感知价值与灾害气象服务满意度之间的关系。研究发现,公众认知水平对灾害气象服务满意度的评价具有重要的影响。另外还发现:1深圳市公众对于气象服务总体评价良好,对台风期间的气象服务的满意度最高,而对气象预警信息获得的便捷性的满意度最低;2公众气象认知与灾害气象服务感知价值均显著影响公众对于灾害气象服务的满意度;3提高公众气象认知,可通过促进对气象服务价值的感知,进而提高公众的满意度。针对以上结论,给出了相应的政策建议。     

People's risk perception of glacial lake outburst flooding: a case of Tsho Rolpa Lake,Nepal

Previous research indicates that people's perception of risk from a particular hazard positively influences their adoption of effective mitigation strategies and responses. This research investigates the risk perceptions of people living downstream from Tsho Rolpa Glacial Lake of Nepal. Field surveys revealed that people living beneath the Tsho Rolpa glacial lake possess a low risk perception despite the probability of a glacial lake outburst at their location. Further investigation reveals that many individuals have made no adjustments in response to the potential disaster. The low risk perception on the part of the riverine population is chiefly attributed to the cry-wolf effect of the 1997 evacuation that followed an inaccurate prediction of a Tsho Rolpa outburst. Previous remediation structures were kept in place, but appear to have created a false sense of security among those at risk. This overconfidence in the rudimentary efforts employed thus far is illustrated by the fact that many residents have moved their infrastructure even closer to the river channel in recent years. Partial mitigation efforts have muted people's perceptions of the environmental risk and have therefore increased the vulnerability of the communities to a probable outburst flood.     

Public perception of drought and climate change in southeast England

Droughts occur as a natural feature of many climates. Several southern areas of the UK experienced water stress during 2004–2006 because of low water availability and high water demand. Climate change scenarios suggest that drought frequency could increase here in the future. This will increase the competition for water across all sectors. Understanding people's perceptions of drought and climate change is likely to be an important factor for sustainable water management by pointing to barriers to behavioural change. A mixed methodology study using questionnaires and focus groups was conducted in the Anglian and southern regions of the UK to explore public perceptions of drought and climate change. Respondents attributed the 2004–2006 regional drought to lower than average rainfall. Water-intensive lifestyles, a growth in population, increasing housing developments, leaking pipes and the privatization of water companies were also implicated. The majority of respondents claimed to change their behaviour to conserve water during 2006. Regarding the future, and under a number of different scenarios, people were more inclined to accept restrictions than agree to pay more to ensure the supply of water. They were concerned about climate change and recognized that more frequent water shortages may be one of the impacts, but this concern did not necessarily translate into action. Barriers to engagement with climate change and water-efficient behaviour included a lack of accessible information, a lack of knowledge regarding the integration of environmental spheres, a lack of resources, and a perceived lack of institutional engagement. The barriers identified appear to pose a major challenge to successful adaptation to climate change.     

社会减灾能力信任及水灾风险感知的区域对比——基于江西九江和宜春公众的调查

研究公众对社会减灾能力及灾害风险的认识，有助于从公众视角揭示风险潜在因素，不仅是进行风险沟通的必备环节，还可以为开展有效的减灾宣传教育、提高公众减灾意识提供决策依据。通过社会调查（221份样本）和统计分析方法，比较了江西九江、宜春公众对于社会减灾能力的信任及水灾风险感知。结果表明，公众对于社会减灾能力基本持信任态度，信任度高低排序为：灾害监测预报>政府应急>防灾工程>预警传播，其中宜春公众的信任度较高；公众对于水灾的风险感知较弱，尤其是宜春公众认为水灾发生、受灾的可能性很小；公众的信任与对区域减灾能力的了解无关，主要是受到受灾经历（受灾次数、灾情损失、灾后救援）的影响，即区域本底灾害风险的高低导致公众认知的差异，风险较高区域（九江）的公众具有更为明确的降低风险的行为倾向及意愿。     

自然观光地旅游者的风险感知变化及差异分析——以九寨沟自然风景区为例

旅游风险感知就是旅游者在其旅游行为前及过程中对可能发生的负面结果的感知,风险感知目前已成为旅游安全研究中的重要内容。通过构建旅游者风险感知量表,以九寨沟为案例地进行实证研究得出：（1）旅游者感知风险主要分为3个维度：功能障碍型、危机事件型及文化冲突型;（2）旅游者的总体风险感知较小,其中功能障碍型风险较大,其次为危机事件和文化冲突,并且地震等危机事件并未成为旅游者担心的主要风险;（3）不同旅游者的差异主要体现在“花费冤枉钱”、“迷路或与同伴走失”、“语言障碍”等方面,性别、地域、是否经历过灾害、是否买保险、是否带药品等因素对各类风险感知差异没有显著影响。旅游者风险感知研究为完善旅游安全理论提供了参考,并且对旅游地的风险管理提供了依据,具有指导和借鉴意义     

What can a hazard function teach us about drivers’ perception of hazards?

Objective: Hazard perception (HP) is typically defined as the ability to read the road and anticipate hazardous situations. Several studies have shown that HP is a driving skill that correlates with traffic crashes. Measuring HP differences between various groups of drivers typically involves a paradigm in which participants observe short videos of real-world traffic scenes taken from a driver’s or a pedestrian’s perspective and press a response button each time they identify a hazard. Young, inexperienced drivers are considered to have poor HP skills compared to experienced drivers, as evident by their slower response times (RTs) to road hazards. Nevertheless, though several studies report RT differences between young, inexperienced and experienced drivers, other studies did not find such differences. We have already suggested that these contradictory findings may be attributed to how cases of no response—that is, a situation where a participant did not respond to a hazard—are being treated. Specifically, we showed that though survival analysis handles cases of no response appropriately, common practices fail to do so. These methods often replace a case of no response with the mean RT of those who responded or any other central tendency parameters. The present work aims to show that treating cases of no response appropriately as well as selecting a distribution that fits the RT data is more than just a technical phase in the analysis.

Method: This work used simulation of predefined distributions and real-world data.

Results: It was demonstrated that selecting the appropriate distribution and treating nonresponse cases appropriately affect the shape and characteristics of the density, survival, and hazard functions.

Conclusions: The suggested process has the ability to provide researchers with additional information regarding the nature of the traffic scenes that enables differentiating between various hazardous situations and between various users with different characteristics such as age or experience.     

SOME FACTORS AFFECTING THE DETERMINATION OF PARTICULATE CARBON AND NITROGEN IN RIVER WATER1

The effect of storing samples prior to determination of particulate nitrogen and carbon concentrations were investigated. Freezing of water samples between collection and analysis has a substantial effect on the results obtained. Storage of samples at 5°C also affects the results, although the changes which occurred were generally less than for frozen samples. When the particulates were collected onto a filter immediately after sample collection and stored in that form until analysis only small changes in the results were observed. This suggests that samples for the determination of particulate nitrogen and carbon concentrations should be filtered immediately upon sample collection and the analysis performed as soon as possible.     

Reducing disaster risks 1980–2010: Some reflections and speculations

Through personal reflections on themes covering past experiences, the author considers selected experiences of disaster risk management (DRM) that span 30 years of DRM, and makes some speculations concerning the future, and ponders whether within the selected themes the future looks positive or negative. The observations begin with some memories of the Ocho Rios Conference: a multi disciplinary expedition to examine housing and hazards in Pakistan; issues concerning education and training; and finally the success of a massive reconstruction project of rural dwellings in Pakistan following the 2005 earthquake. Some key questions are considered: the value of community-based risk management; the reduction of short- or long-term risks; the protection of critical facilities; whose reality is being addressed? official neglect of education for DRM; the conditions needed to create highly effective safe reconstruction in rural Pakistan.     

认知资源对公众城市气象灾害防御支付意愿的影响研究——基于南京市暴雨灾害防御的实证

城市气象灾害防御措施的改进是防灾减灾的有效手段,但如何在辨识公众支付意愿的基础上,构建多方成本分担的灾害防御制度是解决问题的关键。从成本分担的视角出发,以南京暴雨灾害防御为例,分析公众对增强型城市气象灾害防御的支付意愿及认知资源在其中的重要作用。通过构建由Probit模型和有序Probit模型组成的递归混合模型,探讨认知资源和经济资源在公众支付决策中的重要性。研究表明:认知资源的作用十分明显,且随着公众对暴雨灾害风险感知、防御措施了解程度、防御制度认可程度的提高,公众支付意愿越强。而暴雨灾害风险感知又受到灾害趋势认知和经历的共同影响,这两个变量分别影响风险感知的广度和深度,但受教育程度对风险感知深度的影响并不显著。核心建议是从满足公众对城市暴雨灾害风险、防御措施、灾害趋势等知识的需求,政府应该加强暴雨灾害科普宣传的主动性、提升主管和协同部门的公信力;规范科普知识内容、拓宽科普渠道。