Hazard Risk and Living with Hazards

This final lesson in the Hazards module draws together the themes of risk, perception, adaptation and governance. It addresses the fundamental question: why do people continue to live in hazardous environments? And it examines how societies can build resilience, adapt to hazards and govern risk through local, national and international frameworks. These themes are essential for high-level evaluation in AQA 20-mark essays.

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Why Do People Live in Hazardous Areas?

Despite the risks, approximately 1 billion people live in flood-prone areas, 800 million within 100 km of an active volcano, and 2.7 billion in earthquake-prone regions. The reasons are complex and multifaceted:

Economic Reasons

Reason	Example
Fertile volcanic soils	Volcanic ash weathers to produce nutrient-rich andosols. The slopes of Mount Merapi (Indonesia) are among the most densely farmed landscapes in the world — rice yields are 3–4 times higher than on non-volcanic soils. The benefits of staying outweigh the perceived risk of eruption
Employment and livelihoods	Coastal communities depend on fishing and tourism; farmers depend on floodplain agriculture; workers depend on urban employment in cities built on fault lines (e.g., Tokyo, San Francisco, Istanbul)
Tourism	Volcanic landscapes attract tourists (Iceland, Hawaii, Yellowstone); this creates jobs and revenue that bind communities to hazardous locations
Mineral resources	Geothermal energy (Iceland, Kenya), mineral deposits near volcanoes, fertile flood plains
Property and investment	People have invested their life savings in property; leaving means financial ruin. Insurance can make the risk feel manageable

Social and Cultural Reasons

Reason	Detail
Community ties	People are bound to places by family, social networks, cultural identity and community membership. Leaving means losing these connections
Ancestral land	Indigenous and traditional communities may have profound spiritual and cultural ties to land in hazardous areas
Religious belief	Some communities interpret hazards as divine will and believe that faith provides protection
Lack of awareness	Some populations, particularly recent migrants to hazardous areas, may not be aware of the risks
Normalisation	People who have lived through minor hazard events without serious harm may underestimate the risk of future events — the normalcy bias

Constrained Choice

Many people do not choose to live in hazardous areas — they have no alternative:

• Poverty — the poor are often forced into the most dangerous locations (flood-prone slums, unstable hillsides, coastal lowlands) because they cannot afford safer land
• Land tenure — in many developing countries, the urban poor have no legal title to land and build wherever they can find space
• Rapid urbanisation — cities in LICs are growing so fast that planning and regulation cannot keep pace; millions live in unplanned, unregulated settlements in high-risk areas
• Political marginalisation — ethnic minorities and politically excluded groups are often pushed to marginal, hazardous land

Exam Tip: The question "Why do people live in hazardous areas?" is deceptively simple. The best answers will go beyond listing reasons and explore the inequality that constrains choice. Many people living in the most dangerous locations are not making a free choice — they are trapped by poverty, land tenure systems and political marginalisation.

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Risk Perception and the Perception Gap

The Perception Gap

There is often a significant gap between actual risk (as calculated by scientists) and perceived risk (as understood by individuals and communities):

graph TD
    A["Actual Risk<br/>(scientific assessment)"] --> B["Perception Gap"]
    C["Perceived Risk<br/>(individual/community assessment)"] --> B
    B --> D["Influences behaviour:<br/>evacuation decisions,<br/>preparedness, land-use choices"]

Factor	Effect on Perceived Risk
Recency	Recent events increase perceived risk; long gaps between events decrease it. After the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, coastal communities were highly aware of tsunami risk; 20 years later, awareness may have declined
Dread factor	Hazards perceived as catastrophic, uncontrollable and involuntary (e.g., nuclear accidents, supervolcanic eruptions) are feared more than hazards that are familiar and controllable
Optimism bias	"It won't happen to me" — people systematically underestimate their personal risk, especially for familiar hazards
Availability heuristic	People judge risk based on how easily examples come to mind — dramatic, media-covered events are perceived as more likely than statistically more common hazards
Trust in authorities	If people trust government warnings and scientific advice, they are more likely to prepare and evacuate; distrust (often well-founded) reduces compliance

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Adaptation and Resilience

What Is Resilience?

Key Definition: Resilience is the ability of a system, community or society to resist, absorb, accommodate, adapt to, transform and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions through risk management (UNDRR, 2017).

Building Resilience: A Multi-Scale Approach

Scale	Actions
Individual/Household	Emergency kits; insurance; knowledge of evacuation routes; strengthened housing; savings as a financial buffer; community mutual aid networks
Community	Community-based early warning systems; volunteer emergency response teams; local hazard mapping; social cohesion and mutual support; cultural practices that embed hazard awareness
City/Regional	Land-use zoning; enforced building codes; critical infrastructure resilience (hospitals, power, water, transport); urban drainage systems; green infrastructure (parks, wetlands) to manage flood risk
National	National disaster management agencies (e.g., FEMA, Japan's Cabinet Office for Disaster Management); building code legislation; national early warning systems; disaster risk financing; social protection programmes
International	Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction; IPCC climate assessments; international aid mechanisms; technology transfer; capacity building in LICs

Case Study: Bangladesh — Living with Flood Risk

Bangladesh is one of the world's most flood-prone countries:

• ~80% of the country is floodplain (the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghna delta)
• ~26% of the country floods in an average year; in severe years (1998, 2004, 2007), 60–70% of the country has been inundated
• Population: ~170 million in an area the size of England and Wales
• GDP per capita: ~$2,500 (lower-middle income)

Despite these challenges, Bangladesh has dramatically reduced flood deaths through adaptation: