NEHRP Clearinghouse
- Title
- Risk and Public Policy.
- File
- PB81120057.pdf
- Author(s)
- Pate, M. E.
- Source
- National Science Foundation, Washington, DC. Engineering and Applied Science., July 1979, 60 p.
- Identifying Number(s)
- 37
- Abstract
- Seismic risks are considered for which public authorities have all or part of the decisionmaking power to define collective interests and mitigate or control the level of exposure. The objective is to deal consistently with risks in a given philosophical framework in order to compare them and to allocate public funds for risk mitigation in an equitable and efficient way. The problem of 'risk' is formulated and defined Risk is measured with respect to the problem of consequential rare events, the density of risk, the choice of random variables in analysis and evaluation, and the perception and acceptance of seismic risk. Economic issues associated with risk in public policy such as the social rate of discount, economic life under uncertainty, and capital immobilization for the mitigation of risks are discussed. An investigation of priorities and life saving methods are reviewed. The problem of warnings and alerts is studied from the standpoint of warnings as a crisis situation, warnings and socio-economic structure, and the liability question.
- Keywords
- Probability theory; Seismic risk; Buildings; Earthquake engineering; Risk; Hazards; Economic analysis; Earthquakes