Search results

Evaluating project proposals with respect to safety and reliability objectives is extremely complex. Several tangible as well as intangible factors need to be considered. Also, most often these factors are difficult to measure objectively because of their nature and the lack of factual data and information. In addition, they involve uncertainties and risk. The project managers need to enumerate systematically all potential risk factors affecting the safety and reliability objectives of the project, determine the consequences and the impact of their severity, assess the likelihood of the occurrence of these consequences, and select the best course of action to contain and control risks in order to meet the specified project objectives. Develops such a framework by integrating system hazard analysis with the core elements of the risk management process (RMP) to assess potential risks and to evaluate response actions to control and manage the identified risks to satisfy the predetermined safety and reliability objectives.

This chapter discusses some issues of diversity in hazard mitigation when just recovery is considered or not. Justice in hazard mitigation becomes crucial considering unequal distribution of resources, systemic racism, and social vulnerability to hazards. While there has been research on just recovery, there is little or no evidence of research that examines the issue of equity and justice in hazard mitigation, This chapter discusses what hazard mitigation is, the Disaster Mitigation Act of 2000 focusing on the planning process, public involvement in the planning process, some planning theories on vulnerability, and building the case for achieving and striving for justice and equity in promoting diversity in hazard mitigation. The chapter makes some recommendation on how to achieve diversity in hazard mitigation.

This article posits that the effect of political hazards on the choice of market entry mode varies across multinational firms based on the extent to which they face expropriation hazards from their potential joint-venture partners in the host country (the level of contractual hazards). As political hazards increase, the multinational faces an increasing threat of opportunistic expropriation by the government. Partnering with host-country firms that possess a comparative advantage in interactions with the host-country government can safeguard against this hazard. However, as contractual hazards increase, the potential benefit to the joint-venture partner of manipulating the political system for its own benefit at the expense of the multinational increases as well, thereby diminishing the hazard-mitigating benefit of forming a joint venture. A two-stage bivariate probit estimation technique is used to test these hypotheses on a sample of 3,389 overseas manufacturing operations by 461 firms in 112 countries.

Two worldwide trends in recent decades are commonly noted and sometimes linked in discussing disasters. First, the reported global cost of natural disasters has risen significantly, with a 14-fold increase between the 1950s and 1990s (Munich Re, 1999). During the 1990s, major natural catastrophes are reported to have resulted in economic losses averaging an estimated US$ 54 billion per annum (in 1999 prices) (ibid). Record losses of some US$ 198 billion were recorded in 1995, the year of the Kobe earthquake – equivalent to 0.7 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP) (ibid).

The Ba River catchment and delta on the island of Viti Levu, Fiji, supports a wealth of livelihoods and is populated by diverse communities who are living with an increased frequency and intensity of hydro-meteorological hazards (floods, cyclones and droughts). Participatory mapping as part of focus group discussions is a tool that can be used to elucidate communities’ understanding of the differing impacts of multiple hazards, as well as the strategies used to prepare and respond to different hazards. In this chapter, the authors present the results of qualitative research undertaken with members of three communities along the Ba River, from the Nausori highlands to the coastal mangroves, with a particular focus on recent floods (2009, 2012) and Tropical Cyclone Winston (2016). The communities draw on a wide range of livelihood strategies from fishing and agriculture to tourism and outside work. Natural hazard events vary in their impact on these livelihood strategies across the landscape and seascape, so that community members can adjust their activities accordingly. The temporal ‘signatures’ of ongoing impacts are also variable across communities and resources. The results suggest that taking a broad, landscape (and seascape) approach to understanding how communities draw livelihoods is valuable in informing effective and inclusive adaptation strategies for environmental change. Furthermore, documenting how the landscape is used in a mapped output may be a valuable tool for future social impact assessment for resource extraction activities.

This study investigates whether a firm that has experienced an environmental accident (EA) is less likely to conduct a product recall. If true, it would indicate that EAs tempt firms to hide operational problems that need to be revealed. The logic is that both events are operational failures that damage a firm's reputation and share price. Following an EA, a firm may avoid a discretionary product recall to avoid providing additional evidence of operational incapability and social irresponsibility and thereby triggering amplified reputational and market penalties.

The dataset is compiled from several public and private sources and includes 4,355 product recalls, 153 EAs and 120 firms from the industries that often recall products, including automotive, pharma, medical device, food and consumer products. The study timeframe is 2002–2013. Empirical models are evaluated using hazard modeling.

Results show that EAs reduce the probability of a product recall by 32%, on average. Effect sizes are larger when accidents are more frequent or more severe and when recalls are less severe. Through post hoc analyses, the study finds support for the proposed mechanism that firms avoid recalls due to reputational concerns, provides evidence that EAs can have a lengthy impact on recall behavior, and shows that firms are more likely to avoid recalls managed by the CPSC and NHTSA than recalls managed by the FDA.

Prior studies in operations management (OM) have not examined the impact of one negative event on another. This study finds that EAs tempt firms to hide operational problems that need to be revealed. While recalling fewer defective products is of concern to consumers and regulators, should EAs influence a broader set of discretionary operational decisions, such as closing/relocating a production facility, outsourcing production or conducting a layoff, study implications increase significantly.

Tourism and natural hazards share a long pathway, owing to the fragile existential status of certain tourist destinations and voluntary and involuntary intervention of mankind in the business of natural environment. Over a course of history, numberless natural hazards prevailed and left behind some of the colossal and collateral damage on the physicality and virtuality of destinations. Volume of studies contended this direct and inverse association. Resultantly, impact measurement, ongoing imagery issues and future forecasting have been made to ease out the tourist destination from the consequences of natural hazards. Moreover, considering the inner fabric of tourism system (demand and supply side), natural hazards have been foreseen as unwanted yet necessary event to be emphasized and taken care of. Predominantly, in the existing global milieu of maximum human intervention in the climatic cycle and its outcomes in the form of global warming, climate concerns, natural hazards have been considered as inevitable and destined. Hence, it needs a comprehensive literature-based study to assess the risk factor of natural hazards on the tourist destinations. This study, in acquiescence to address this grey section, intends to explore the existing studies (drafted on the risks impacts of natural hazards on demand, supply and ancillary segments of tourism) and structure the findings thematically and orchestrate these findings in the existing body of literature. Implications from the findings have been presented.

This paper analyzes the effects on housing prices of fire hazard disclosure in real estate transactions. In 1998, California passed the Natural Hazard Disclosure Law (AB 1195), which requires sellers to fill out a form disclosing to potential buyers whether their residence is in a statutory flood, wildfire, or seismic zone. This study looks specifically at whether homes in designated wildfire hazard zones in California saw any drop in value following this law. We found that location in a statutory fire zone is actually associated with a 3% positive price premium both before and after AB 1195, probably due to the unmeasured amenity values associated with location in the urban–rural interface. However, the combination of proximity to recent fire perimeters and post-AB 1195 disclosure does have a negative effect on selling price. After AB 1195, homes in statutory fire hazard zones that were within five kilometers of the perimeter of a major and recent fire sold on average for 5.1% (or $10,600) less than comparable homes that were in statutory fire zones but not near the perimeter of a recent fire, while no such differential exists prior to the law. This indicates that state-level fire-disclosure requirements prior to AB1195 (which were numerous, but vague, limited to fewer hazard zones, and poorly enforced) were inadequate. Therefore, while disclosure on its own does not appear to have influenced the real estate market in all statutory fire zones, it does negatively impact prices when in combination with proximity to a recent major fire.