Principles of Natural Risk Assessment and Management

A. L. Ragozin

Institute of Environmental Geoscience, Russian Academy of Sciences,
Ulanskii per. 13, Moscow, 101000 Russia

Received May 15, 1999

Abstract—To ensure the safety of the population and numerous economic facilities in the regions of develop-
ment of natural and technological hazards (NTH) has recently became an issue of primary importance because
of the great social, economical, and environmental damage caused by these processes. The number of victims
of NTH in the world and the volume of material losses annually increase by 8.6 and 10.4%, respectively. This
hinders the sustainable development of many countries. The widely applicable technical methods for the solu-
tion of this problem do not decrease (and will not decrease in the foreseeable future) the losses caused by NTH,
because they are mostly aimed at the liquidation of negative consequences of NTH rather than at their preven-
tion. This paper considers a new concept of the complex solution of this problem based on the analysis of nat-
ural risks and their admissible values. The new basic stages, principles, and methods of such an analysis, which
represents the permanent cyclic process including prediction of natural hazards, assessment of the vulnerability
of facilities, and assessment and management of risks of losses caused by natural destroying effects, are char-
acterized.