Learning Outcomes
After completing the activities associated with this unit, students should:

• understand that the term “hazard” does not lend itself to a simple, standardized definition;
• have a sense of the importance of hazard perception and the (albeit inconsistent) differences in risk perception between different genders, ethnic groups, etc.;
• know where regionally certain hazards are more likely to occur;
• understand that hazard impacts vary with location because of natural, technological, and social systems;
• be able to use the Internet/WWW as a research tool;
• know how to design, administer, and qualitatively analyze a simple survey.

Activity 1.1:  My Very Own Disaster	-- Story telling in small groups and discussion with the entire class
Activity 1.2:  Delineating the Hazards of Place	-- Web search, mapping, and creation of national hazard profiles
Activity 1.3:  Five Myths About Hazards	-- Critical text reading and news media analysis
Activity 1.4:  Differences in Hazard Perception	-- Survey of local community residents on their risk perception

 

Suggested Readings
The following readings accompany the activities for this unit.  Choose those readings most appropriate for the activities you select and those most adequate for the skill level of your students.

• Unit 1: What are Environmental Hazards?
• The background information to Unit 1 that all students should read.
• Jones, David. 1993. Environmental hazards in the 1990s: Problems, paradigms and prospects. Geography 78, 2: 161-165.
• This article accompanies Activity 1.3. It is accessible and easy to read. It can also be used as a general background reading to Unit 1 as it reflects on contemporary hazards research in general before it highlights the pervasive misconceptions about hazards.
• Namafe, Charles and Frances Slater. 1995. Floods: Friends or enemies? Geographical Education 8, 3: 57-62.
• An interesting article that questions the common yet culturally specific notion of floods as hazards (i.e., as enemies) by comparing the Dutch ways of managing flood hazards with the Zambian view of floods (and by extension, the Zambian perception of Dutch intervention in Zambia).
• Mitchell, James K. 1989. Hazards Research. In: Geography in America, 410-424.
• Geography in America encompasses accessible overview articles of American research directions in geographic subdisciplines and related areas of interests. A good article to frame the module as a whole.
• Greenberg, Michael and Dona Schneider. 1995. Gender differences in risk perception: Effects differ in stressed vs. non-stressed environments. Risk Analysis 15, 4: 503-511.
• One of the suggested readings for Activity 1.4. The study finds that there are consistent differences between men and women in non-stressed environments, but non-consistent differences in behavior among the two genders in stressed environments. A good preparation for the survey students are asked to conduct.
• Flynn, James, Paul Slovic, and C.K. Mertz. 1994. Gender, race, and perception of environmental risks. Risk Analysis 14, 6: 1101-1108.
• This study (also for Activity 1.4) analyzes risk perception through all possible combinations of gender (male/female), race (white/African American), and culture. It finds a fairly consistent difference between (1) males and females from Europe and Canada and females from the US and (2) white males from the US in how hazards are viewed. Power, status, alienation, and trust are offered as explanations for the findings, but the study opens up many new questions. Point students especially to Figures 1-4. (See studies by Elaine Vaughn on Hispanic farm workers for more sophisticated research of cultural aspects.)
• Cutter, Susan. forthcoming. Environmental disasters. In: The Women’s Studies encyclopedia, eds. C. Karmaraw and D. Spender. New York: Wheatsheaf.
• This general statement is useful as it discusses briefly the gender differences in how environmental hazards are defined and perceived.

Skills

• recalling memory
• story telling in a clear and interesting way
• critical thinking and non-judgmental listening

• Student Worksheet 1.1
• Supporting Material 1.1 (optional)

Tasks
This is a starter activity, meant to stimulate students to think about hazards, to connect with the subject matter personally, and to provoke interest in the subject. It works well even before students have read anything about hazards.

Ask students to jot down any experience they (or a relative or close friend) have had with a “hazard.” Do not give them a definition of a hazard and do not narrow their choices by giving examples. Thus, students will define for themselves what they think is a hazard. You may prompt them with the following questions or statements:

• What is the most dangerous thing you ever did?
• Think about the most hazardous experience you ever had.
• Can you remember a time when you felt that you were in a lot of danger?

After going through a number of examples like this with all kinds of experiences, remind students that you started this activity out by asking them to recall a hazardous experience and that there have been a variety of responses. Ask students “So what is a hazard?” -- a question that may be met with a confused silence. Tell them that the silence is the correct answer; there is no one answer to what a “hazard” is. From here you may introduce the module content, or discuss with the class implications of differing hazard perceptions and experiences for measuring trends, for hazard management, and so on.
 
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Activity 1.2   Delineating the Hazards of Places

 
Goal
By developing a hazard profile of a particular country, students learn that there are extensive geographic variations in the occurrence and impacts of hazards at both the regional and global scales.

Skills

• “Web surfing” (becoming familiar with the available Internet-search software, data search, evaluation of search results, distilling relevant information)
• creating an interesting hazard portfolio for a chosen country (incl. graphs, tables, and text)
• report writing

• Student Worksheet 1.2
• Supporting Material 1.2 (optional)
• Appendix A: Useful Internet/WWW Hazards Sites
• A large, class-size world map (alternatively, an overhead of a world map)
• Colored push-pins (alternatively, color pens for overheads)
• Computer terminals with access to Internet/WWW (assigning students to small groups will reduce the necessity for many computers)

Tasks
This is a computer-based activity involving the Internet and the World Wide Web. Students will gain insight into the variety of hazards that a chosen country faces. Depending on this country’s location in terms of geophysical hazards, its state of development, and its economic and technological activities, a specific hazards profile will emerge. Comparing different countries’ hazard profiles will reveal commonalities and idiosyncrasies.

This activity should be done in small groups of 3-4 students. You can let students form groups and quickly decide on a country, or you may already have chosen a number of countries that students can form groups around according to their regional interests. Make sure various parts of the world are represented (i.e., first, second and third world countries; low-, mid-, and high-latitude countries).

Students look for the data on their country in some of the on-line sources provided in Appendix A: Selected Internet/WWW Hazards Sites. For those students new to the World Wide Web, or to generally facilitate the entry into the cyber-world of hazards, you may want to recommend the hazard site of the Virtual Library as a starting point (http://life.csu.edu.au/hazards/library.html). At this site, students will have a choice of hazard topics to choose from (see Supporting Material 1.2) and links to other relevant sites are available. This entry point is particularly helpful if students already have an idea of what types of hazard to expect in their chosen country. Encourage students to explore additional web sites that might be pertinent to developing their country’s hazards profile. Some countries are more affected by natural hazards than others. Still other countries are more susceptible to technological failures.

If students do not know which hazards to expect in any one country, they may begin their search from one of the global overview sites, e.g., The Global Earthquake Report (http://www.seismo-watch.com); the Pan American Health Organization (http://www.paho.org/), the World Health Organization (http://www.who.ch/); Red Cross/Red Crescent (http://www.ifrc.org); the Global Flood Monitoring and Analysis Project’s site  (http://www.dartmouth.edu/artsci/geog/floods/Index.html), or the Natural Hazards Center at University of Colorado in Boulder (http://www.colorado.edu/hazards).

It is a good idea to check and verify the Internet sites prior to assigning this activity because Internet and Web addresses are subject to change.

For ease in conducting the analysis, students should focus only on specific disaster events as reported to disaster and relief agencies, rather than the chronic hazards problems that almost all nations face, such as water and air pollution (unless this is a prominent issue in their chosen country), or driving and aviation hazards.

Ask students to prepare a short report (a few paragraphs) on the hazardousness of their assigned country to present to the class (no more than 5-7 minutes for each presentation). The parameters they should examine include but are not limited to the following:

1. type of disaster
2. frequency, magnitude, duration of event
3. location
4. impact (deaths, injuries, property damage)
5. trends over time and over space

The whole class will participate in creating a global hazard map with the information gathered in these reports. Each student or group will use colored tacks to display the location of their hazards on the map. Alternatively, place dots with color pens on an overhead map (this may be easier but is not as readily available for future reference while working with this module). Use a different color for each type of hazard (i.e., red for earthquakes, blue for floods, etc.). When all countries have been marked on this map, ask students to summarize the geographic variation of hazards, indicating which countries have which types of hazards in common and why this may be so.

This activity may also be assigned to students individually, in which case you may ask them to submit a short paper (5-7 pages) including tables of disaster statistics, graphs that plot the number of disasters over time, and a dot map showing the location of each event.
 
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Activity 1.3  Five Myths About Hazards

Goal
Students read a critical approach to hazards representation in the media and elsewhere and apply this approach in their own analysis of news media articles on hazards.

Skills

• critical analysis of news media
• application of general, abstract myths to specific, concrete text passages
• clear class presentation of findings

• Student Worksheet 1.3
• Suggested reading: Jones (1993)

Tasks
One week before this activity, ask students to select two newspaper or magazine articles -- one reporting on a hazard event within the US and one reporting on a hazard event outside the US.  Students should also read the suggested reading (Jones 1993) that highlights the five misconceptions concerning hazards which are usually apparent in the way they are represented in the media (the five myths or misconceptions are clearly listed in the article).

Using the articles they find, students prepare a two-page summary in which they

• summarize the hazard they focused on;
• show how each article demonstrates the ways of thinking about hazards that are mentioned in the suggested reading (Jones 1993); and
• compare and contrast how the stories of the hazard events are told to the reader.

Activity 1.4   Differences in Hazard Perception

Goal
Students examine variations in risk perception by surveying community residents in an area of environmental stress.  Students consider whether their results support published findings on the importance of gender, ethnicity, and place to the perception of risks.

Skills

• critical text comprehension
• development of simple survey questions
• administering of survey to local community residents
• analysis of data (quantitative analysis optional)
• writing a research report

• Student Worksheet 1.4
• Suggested readings:  Greenberg and Schneider (1995); Flynn et al. (1994)

Tasks
Students examine whether there are any gender, ethnicity, and place-based differences in the perception of environmental risks. The existing literature provides mixed results, as the two suggested readings illustrate. Ask students to read these articles and critically assess the differences in methodologies and results. They also should note (or be made aware of) the lack of discussion about place in reporting and explaining the results of these studies.

Once students are familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of these two studies, they should begin to design their own survey. The goal of their survey is to discern whether there are differences in how women, men, whites, people of color, and different cultural groups in different places in their town perceive environmental hazards. You may pick several neighborhoods beforehand (e.g., inner city, new suburbs, older suburbs) preferably with known hazards in them. If these neighborhoods are not ethnically mixed, try to find some that are or suggest  neighborhoods that face similar hazards but differ demographically.

Geographers have conducted various types of surveys, but we recommend a five-point Likert scale. The number of survey items should be limited to no more than 15 or 20. Ideas for the survey items can be taken, but should not be limited to, those used in the above-mentioned studies. As this is likely to be the first opportunity for your students to do a survey, help them formulate the survey questions so that they are easy to answer, clear, unambiguous, polite, respectful, and interesting. Ask students to pair up and prepare a list of survey questions and hand them in for evaluation and suggestions before they begin the survey. Also ask them to formulate five hypotheses prior to starting their field work.

In their paper, students should report what differences they found in risk perception and how they can be explained.  Students should use social, demographic, economic, and political background information about the neighborhoods they survey to support their conclusions. This may include locational specifics such as average level of education, population changes, housing policies, income variations, employment, quality of life measures, etc. Ask students also to analyze their findings with respect to the hypotheses they proposed earlier. The report should be no longer than five pages (one report per pair of survey interviewers) and should include tables and graphics, and possibly maps. Students can receive extra credit if they perform statistical analyses and/or prepare maps using GIS.

Note: This activity may require approval for research involving human subjects from your college/university. Please make sure to comply with these requirements.

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