On Mon, 03 Jun 2013 06:43:48 -0700, Marie Helweg-Larsen wrote:
I study risk perception and I have also been noticing the types of things
people have said about living there or their unwillingness to seek shelter.
There is quite a bit of research on the perceived risk of natural
disasters.
Briefly, tornados are a good example of a risk that is present but hard to
quantify and particularly impossible to figure out how it might affect you.
A few points:
(1) Many natural disasters such as tornados have extensive and somewhat
reliable records available for all of the U.S. and this can serve as the
basis
of calculating the probability that one will experience a specific event
like
a tornado. A number of residents from Moore, OK, who were interviewed
on TV (by local station KFOR which was re-transmitted on the Weather
channel and other channels) after the tornado hit readily said that they had
been told that there was only a 2-3% chance that they would be hit by
a serious tornado (i.e., greater than EF 3). Given the costs associated with
building underground structures and the low probability of the event, it
made most sense not to have the such structures. Of course, now that
they have been hit by an EF5 tornado, some might argue that that justifies
building underground structures. However, I am reminded of a scene
from the movie "Life According to Garp" where Robin Williams'
character T.S. Garp and his wife are out looking for a house to buy.
While looking at one house, a small propeller airplane crashes into it.
Garp/Williams character turns to his wife and says:
|T. S. Garp: We'll take the house. Honey, the chances of another plane
|hitting this house are astronomical. It's been pre-disastered. We're going
|to be safe here."
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084917/quotes
(2) More information about the tornado that hit Moore, including a
NOAA probability map for tornadoes in the U.S., see:
http://www.climatecentral.org/news/making-sense-of-the-moore-tornado-in-a-climate-context-16021
(3) The University of Oklahoma-Norman campus is a short distance from
Moore and that have a storm prediction center that provides additional
information on how they monitor severe weather; see:
http://www.spc.ncep.noaa.gov/
(4) Now, for those Tipsters who are not teaching this summer, doing any
research, and/or are just goofing off this summer, consider doing the
following
homework assignment that require students to determine the probability
of a tornado in Bolivar County, MS. It makes use of the tornado database
(for a text representation of the data; see:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/ONETOR5006.txt
a codebook for the data is available in a Word file here:
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/wcm/torforma.doc )
And one then uses mapping software (ArcGIS and some other tools)
to map out the tornadoes over specific areas. If one treats the probability
of a tornado as following a Poisson distribution, one can then determine
what the probability of experiencing a tornado for a fixed area is.
A nice powerpoint (which could use some editing) lays this all out
and might be a worthwhile experience if one doesn't have more pressing
duties; see:
http://mississippi.deltastate.edu/data/Tornado_Lab/
NOTE: it should be obvious that (a) tornadoes are rare events and
(b) the smaller the area that one consider, the lower the probability that
a rare event will occur in the space.
(5) I have no idea what study Britt wrote about and if someone does know,
could they post a reference? I'm not sure what his point was/is.
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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