Faculty Perspective
A radar view of Katrina
Image courtesy of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration
According to David Ropeik, director of risk communication at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis and instructor of ENVR E-160 Critical Thinking about Environmental and Public Health Issues, the recent hurricane season exemplifies “how risk perception is less a process of statistical fact-based analysis and more one of ‘intuitive reasoning’ informed by risk perception psychology factors.”
“Tens of thousands who could have fled New Orleans chose to stay, to some degree because natural risks simply don’t evoke the same degree of apprehension that manmade risks—like terrorism—do,” he says. “Also, risks that people are less aware of evoke less worry than those staring people in the face. While awareness of Katrina was high, the deadly peril of hurricanes was not. Yet several days later the evacuation of Houston in advance of Hurricane Rita was massive, because awareness of the implications of a powerful hurricane was higher. With the Katrina experience in New Orleans fresh in people’s minds, many more people left Houston than might have had Katrina not happened. When a risk is personified with real victims, it’s scarier than when it’s just a concept. Before Katrina hit, the danger of hurricanes was an idea. But after, with all those tragic deaths of real people so widely publicized, Rita posed a more real risk in the minds of the people of Houston.”
Extension Courses with a Global Conscience
ENVR E-130 Global Climate Change: The Science, Social Impact, and Diplomacy of a World Environmental Crisis
ENVR E-160 Critical Thinking about Environmental and Public Health Issues
GEOL E-105 Living Dangerously: The Earth, Its Resources, and the Environment
MGMT E-148 Crisis Management and Emergency Preparedness