Hazards Societal Consequences and Risk Communication

Geographical Analyses — The center has conducted and managed Geographical Information Systems (GIS) analyses across the science, engineering, environmental, and societal consequence aspects of the scenarios. Spatial analyses are used to map multiple hazards and estimate the exposures of or damages to populations, land uses, infrastructures, and buildings to these hazards.

Economic Consequences — Economic consequence analysis pertains to business interruption (productivity) losses due to physical damages, lifeline service outages, and ripple effects along supply chains. WGSC coordinates with lifeline operators (e.g., transportation agencies, electric power providers, and the telecommunications industry) on outage estimates. In catastrophic events when recovery languishes for many years, business interruption losses can exceed physical repair and replacement costs (e.g., Hurricane Katrina). The economic consequence analysis includes an investigation of economic resilience at the levels of firms, sectors, and the regional economy. In collaboration with the University of Southern California, Boston University and the Association of Bay Area Governments (since merged with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission), economic forecasting and policy analysis tools (e.g., Input-output, REMI, and computable general equilibrium models) are applied to estimate potential business interruption losses and economic resilience.

Community Recovery — Just as police and fire fighters need exercises to prepare for emergency response, so must the "second wave" of responders — city managers, planners, building officials, engineers, and other staff who will have local recovery responsibilities. Thus, the recovery phase of a disaster also deserves attention in scenario-based emergency management exercises. In collaboration with Laurie Johnson Consulting, Inc., the ShakeOut scenario was extended by populating a recovery model in consultation with communities. The HayWired scenario contains an integrated analysis of hazards, concentrated damage and demographic characteristics to identify communities at risk of population displacement and recovery challenges.

Evaluation — Analyses of surveys and interviews are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the SAFRR scenario development process, project outputs and communication of results for changes in awareness, knowledge, and action. WGSC has managed contracts for the Tsunami and HayWired scenarios for independent evaluation by the Natural Hazards Center Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Risk Communication

 In collaboration with GNS Science and Massey University in Aotearoa, New Zealand, WGSC with the earthquake science center (ESC) studied the communication of aftershock information during the 2010-present Canterbury earthquake sequence in 2013 and 2016 workshop settings. Results have informed subsequent agency’s aftershock forecast communications and product development. The latter study is conducted through the lens of long-term risk communication and explores aftershock forecast scenarios.