Ch 2. Quantifying hazard losses

This chapter considers the natural hazard Risk Manager as an agent for choosing between interventions that affect the impact of future hazards. As such, it is possible to proceed broadly quantitatively, and to set aside the many less-quantifiable concerns that arise during a period of real-time hazard management. Thus the aim is to describe a framework in which it is possible to address questions such as “Should we build a firebreak at this location, or leave things as they are?”. This chapter only considers one source of uncertainty, which is the inherent uncertainty of the hazard itself, often termed aleatory uncertainty. Chapter 3 of this volume considers the extent to which a quantitative analysis can be extended to include more general epistemic uncertainties.