Catastrophes, Disasters, and Calamities: Concepts for Their Assessment

Abstract

We discuss key terms, analytical details, and concepts that clarify the analysis of catastrophic incidents. Those concepts include scenario, paradigm, and plausibility. We discuss and exemplify how the effect of catastrophic incidents can practically be assessed through the discrete couplings of magnitude of the consequences and their frequency of occurrence using risk matrices (or tables). Although these matrices do not raise to the level of cause and effect inherent to the legal arguments demanded by constitutional or statutory law, they are often used as managerial tools. Their predictions associate frequencies to consequences through practical experiences and can be useful when a decision may have to be taken without having sufficient time for protracted scientific study. Although theoretically weak, they are plausible for time-of-the essence assessments and to inform decisions under an imminent threat. We also discuss phrases that describe uncertainty as intervals between probability numbers; for example, very likely to occur is stated as a probability interval between 0 and 0.1 (i.e., 0 and 10%).