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Researchers Propose New Disaster Model

by Jade Brown
Thursday, 01 July 2010

Graphical model demonstrates catastrophic risk

Researchers in China have developed a new environmental catastrophe risk assessment model, which has implications
for predicting risk for both natural and man-made environmental disasters in the United States.

Current natural disaster prediction and warnings systems, such as the Doppler radar for hurricanes and the Richter scale
for earthquakes, predict the area of impact and or the intensity of a natural disaster, but the new risk assessment model
could go a step further by allowing officials to accurately predict impact of such disasters.

According to the study Assessment of Catastrophic Risk Using Bayesian Network Constructed from Domain Knowledge
and Spatial Data by Dr. Lianfa Li and colleagues, the new model combines both domain knowledge and previous data to
construct a robust network, thereby allowing it to more accurately assess the risk posed by disasters than current models.

Unlike most traditional risk assessment models, this model is based on the Bayesian network (BN), a graphical model
that shows dependencies among all variables, shows the probability of relationships among variables, and allows the
user to combine background knowledge with available data, while accounting for missing data.

Though BN models are currently used in other domains, including economics and public health, there are few instances
of the model being used to assess catastrophic risk in natural disasters, according to the authors.

The researchers say BN "is able to represent uncertainty interdependences between factors that describe many real-
world domains, such as public emergency catastrophic events," and "results suggest that BN is a good alternative for risk
assessment and as a decision tool in the management of catastrophic risk."

In assessing catastrophic risk, the model divides risk into three categories: inducing factors (those that cause the
disaster, such as heavy rains inducing flood); environmental factors (those physical or artificial factors that lessen or
worsen the impact of disaster, such as the levees during Hurricane Katrina); and vulnerability factors (those that
determine the likelihood that a system or individual will be able to adapt to the harm of a disaster).

Vulnerability, perhaps the most varying and difficult of the factors to assess, could range from the structure of a building
to the demographics and socioeconomic status of an individual, including income, age, and knowledge.

In the case of Hurricane Katrina, the failure to evacuate the poor black population of New Orleans, for example, stemmed
from a lack of knowledge and resources, the study suggested. Such a failure is an example of how vulnerability factors
play a role in catastrophe assessment risk.

"Our methodology is based on a general modeling framework and the techniques used are applicable for other natural
disasters. Thus, our methodology can be easily extended to other natural disasters if relevant domain knowledge is
incorporated in this framework and relevant data are available," the report read.
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The new model could prove especially helpful in the area of emergency preparedness for hurricanes, earthquakes, and
other natural disasters, which occur on a yearly basis in areas within the United States, the authors suggest.

In the study, the researchers compared different versions of their BN model to nine other non-BN models in assessing
the risk associated with the flooding of the Heihe River, in northwest China, from 2006 to 2008.

For the comparison, they used four scalar measures: the probability of detecting "high loss," the probability of false
alarms, precision, and area.

They found that the BN models were all closer at assessing the true risk--with the latest BN model, BMA, generally
achieving the greatest accuracy.

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