Disaster safety nets for developing countries: Extending public–private partnerships

In developed countries, public–private partnerships involving insurance companies and governments often provide security against the human and economic losses of disasters. These partnerships, however, are neither available nor affordable in most highly exposed developing countries. In this paper we examine recent innovations in financial risk management that extend traditional public–private partnerships to include NGOs, international financial institutions and other donors. Importantly, these partnerships provide secure financial arrangements to low-income communities before disasters strike and thus relieve the uncertainty and anxiety of depending on ad hoc post-disaster aid for recovery and even survival. We examine three examples of extended partnerships: the Turkish Catastrophe Insurance Pool; the Andhra Pradesh microinsurance program and an index-based weather derivative for farmers facing drought in Malawi.     

Risk perception and trust in the context of urban brownfields

Data are reported from a postal questionnaire completed by 747 residents of two urban local authority areas within which there were sites of brownfield land with significant levels of contamination. Respondents rated their perceptions of the extent to which their neighbourhood and own home were relatively vulnerable to contamination, their concern about possible effects of contamination, their satisfaction with their council in terms of consultation with residents on housing and development issues, and their trust in their council with respect to contaminated land risks. Satisfaction with, and trust in, the council was generally low in both areas, and especially so among those who perceived themselves to be more vulnerable to contamination. Nonetheless, dissatisfaction was less marked in the area where the local authority, according to background information, had pursued a more open and proactive style of risk communication and consultation with residents. The main predictors of trust, across both areas, were perceptions that the council was openly prepared to tell residents what they knew, and that the council had residents’ interests at heart. Implications are discussed for the impact of different modes of risk communication on trust.     

基于3S技术的震害快速评估

地震是人类面临的重大自然灾害之一，破坏性地震发生后，对震害的快速评估有利于政府及有关部门对灾情迅速做出应急反应，实施救援。地理信息系统（GIS）、遥感（RS）和全球定位系统（GPS）合称为3S技术。随着计算机技术和地球空间科学的发展。3S技术已逐渐应用于防灾减灾领域。探讨了应用3S技术替代传统的经验性估计决速评估震害的技术路线、方法和前景。首先，归纳了目前防震减灾信息及辅助决策系统建设取得的成绩和存在的问题。通过两个破坏性地震的震害实例，说明了应用基于GIS的系统快速评估震害的可能性和有待重点解决的问题。然后。通过新疆一次地震的遥感图像的变化检测，展示了震害快速评估中借助遥感数字图像处理技术的前景。在上述综合分析的基础上，讨论了三者结合的重要性、潜在功能和优点。     

城市灾害对城市土地利用的影响

随着城市的不断扩张，对城市土地利用的需求量也在不断增加。地震、火灾、风灾、地质破坏是现代城市的主要灾害，城市灾害在一定程度上制约着土地利用的类型。充分运用GIS的空间分析功能，研究了城市灾害对城市土地利用的影响，所得结果可为城市土地利用规划提供辅助决策参考。     

船舶安全熵概念的提出及应用

船舶航行安全很大程度上取决于操作者对船舶航行过程中各种信息的把握,信息掌握的多少可作为衡量船舶安全的一个标准。把船舶航行链分为5种信息处理过程,利用信息熵的原理,提出船舶安全熵的概念,并建立了数学模型。根据船舶航行信息过程的具体因素,建立船舶航行安全评价指标体系;利用熵权法确定5种信息单元及其安全因素权重,对船舶航行的安全熵进行计算,可根据评价模型对船舶安全进行有效评价。利用渤海湾船舶M进行验证,其结果发现船员素质安全熵最大。船舶安全熵方法是对船舶安全评估的一种新探索。     

数字隐写技术及发展趋势

笔者通过强调数字隐写算法和隐写分析算法间的矛盾统一,介绍数字隐写算法的发展历程和趋势以及国内外的研究现状。重点介绍具有代表性的空域LSB隐写算法和频域JPEG图像隐写算法。通过基本算法、对基本算法的分析方法、基本算法改进措施的顺序,介绍算法的发展历程,分析算法的性能。对当前实验研究的进展和数字隐写技术存在的问题进行说明,并提出一些建设性意见,对隐写技术的发展前景和方向进行展望,指出数字隐写技术会成为密码术的重要补充,在信息安全传输方面发挥巨大的作用。     

基于不完全信息博弈理论的地方煤矿安全监管的博弈分析

运用不完全信息重复博弈的基本理论和分析方法，建立了地方政府与煤矿企业的多阶段动态博弈模型。不完全信息的引入改变了完全信息博弈中地方政府会随着从煤矿生产中获益越大对其提供的庇护程度越大，而企业必然选择干扰的结论。一旦地方政府的这种合作行为出现，国家在安全监察方面的成本和难度将会大大减低。     

Fire and explosion risk assessment for large-scale oil export terminal

Now in Russian Federation and other countries large-scale oil terminals (volume of one tank exceeds 100 000 m³, total volume of tanks exceeds 300 000 m³) are designed and constructed. Therefore fire safety of such objects becomes a very important task, solution of which is hardly possible without detail fire risk assessment. This study is aimed to a solution of this problem. Potential, individual and social risks were calculated. The potential risk was defined as a frequency of occurrence of hazardous factors of fires and explosions in a given point of space (the so-called risk contours). The individual risk was defined as a frequency of injuring a given person by hazardous factors of fires and explosions. Time of presence of this person in hazardous zones (near the hazardous installation) is taken into account during calculations of the individual risk. Social risk was defined as a dependence of frequency of injuring a given number of people by hazardous factors of fires and explosions on this number. In practice the social risk is usually determined on injuring not less than 10 people.

The oil terminal under consideration includes the following main parts: crude oil storage consisting of three tanks of volume 100 000 m³ each, input crude oil pipeline of diameter 0.6 m, crude oil pumps, output crude oil pipeline of diameter 0.8 m, auxiliary buildings and facilities. The following main scenarios of tank fires have been considered: rim seal fire, pool fire on a surface of a floating roof, pool fire on a total cross-section surface of the tank, pool fire in a dyke, explosions in closed or semiclosed volumes. Fires and explosions in other parts of the terminal are also taken into account. Effects of escalation of accidents are considered.

Risk contours have been calculated both for the territory of the terminal and for the neighbouring space. The potential risk for the storage zone is near 10⁻⁴–10⁻⁵ year⁻¹, and at a distance 500 m from the terminal the potential risk values do not exceed 10⁻⁶ year⁻¹. The values of the individual risk for various categories of workers are in the range of 10⁻⁵–10⁻⁶ year⁻¹. Because of low number of the workers on the terminal and large distances to towns and villages the social risk value is negligible. These risk values are consistent with practice of the best oil companies, and fire hazard level of the terminal can be accepted as tolerable.     

COMPARISON OF ALTERNATIVE ENGINEERING DESIGNS1

ABSTRACT: Procedures are presented for comparing and evaluating alternative engineering designs for a particular water resources project. By using certain aspects of fuzzy set theory, it is possible to introduce both quantitative and qualitative considerations into the decisionmaking process. In addition, the viewpoints of the various interest groups involved with the water resources development can be realistically incorporated by the evaluation techniques for the alternative designs. Methods are given for eliminating undesirable alternatives and thereby obtaining a reduced set of possible feasible solutions to the problem. Because of the flexibility of the evaluation methods, the viable alternatives should not only satisfy economical, technical. environmental and other types of constraints, but these possible solutions should be politically feasible as well. A method is formulated for checking the sensitivity of the feasible results with respect to the factors that are considered in the analysis.     

Public reaction to the risks of energy technology

Implicit in every government decision on energy technology is a trade-off of a certain amount of risk in return for societal benefits. As a result of growing public concern over such risks, environmental analysts are increasingly being requested not only to describe potential adverse consequences but also to quantify their probability. However, this task is frustrated not only by inadequate experience with, and incomplete knowledge of, the causality of environmental impacts, but also by a disparity between individual and societal views of risk. While the societal view is based on objective risk functions andnet societal benefit, individuals tend to rely on subjective judgment, and consider the distribution as well as the amount of benefit. Thus, environmental risk assessments, produced by analysts on behalf of society as a whole, are likely to be quite speculative, and are unlikely to be reliable indicators of the acceptability of risk to the public.