Unit 2:  Are Things Getting Better Or Worse? 
             Instructor's Guide to Activities
Goals
Students understand that the answer to whether things are getting better or worse depends on who is affected by hazards and global changes and on one’s viewpoint.

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

  • have a critical understanding of current disaster impact trends for various hazards;
  • be able to detect geographic and societal variations in hazard trends;
  • understand the crucial importance of vulnerability in determining present and future disaster impacts, and be able to identify factors that affect societal vulnerability;
  • be able to make a carefully stated connection between hazards and global change;
  • be able to assess critically the options the insurance industry has in dealing with climate change;
  • be able to search for hazards data using the World Wide Web and using local sources (library, agencies, etc.); and
  • be able to plot, map, analyze, and interpret various types of data.
    •  Choice of Activities
    It is neither necessary nor feasible in most cases to complete all activities in each unit. Select those that are most appropriate for your classroom setting and that cover a range of activity types, skills, genres of reading materials, writing assignments, and other activity outcomes. This unit contains the following activities:

    Activity 2.1:  Trends of Individual Hazards -- Web data search, charting of hazard occurrences and visual time series analysis
    Activity 2.2:  How Vulnerable is Your Community? -- group- and class-project to assess vulnerability to a local hazard, integrating contributing factors
    Activity 2.3:  The Hazards-Global Change Journal  -- keeping record of hazards reporting in the news media, analysis of hazard-global change linkage
    Activity 2.4:  Insured Until Death Do Us Part... -- role play and debate on the stance of the insurance industry vis à vis global climate change
     

    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 2 "Are Things Getting Better or Worse?"
  • The Background Information of Unit 2 that all students should read.
    •
  • Cutter, Susan L. 1995. The forgotten casualties: Women, children, and environmental change. Global Environmental Change 5, 3: 181-194.
  • A readable scientific article that highlights issues of social, inter-generational, procedural, and geographic inequity in the impacts of hazards and global changes. Cutter shows how women and children are caught in a poverty-population growth-environmental degradation spiral which puts them at greater risk from hazards and causes relatively greater impacts for them than for more advantaged members of society.
    •
  • Burton, Ian, R.W. Kates, and G.F. White. 1993. Emerging synthesis. In: The environment as hazard, 241-263. Second edition. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
  • This last (and newly added) chapter to the second edition of the classic text on hazards summarizes some of the recent developments in hazards research and relates it to the emerging global change and sustainability research agendas. It also highlights vulnerability studies and the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction, and thus serves well as a follow-up to the Background Information provided in this module.
    •
  • Showalter, P.S., W.E. Riebsame, and M.F. Myers. 1993. Natural hazard trends in the United States: A preliminary review for the 1990s. Working Paper # 83, Natural Hazards Research and Application Information Center, University of Colorado, Boulder.
  • The authors summarize US natural hazard trends since the mid-1970s, including an assessment of the difficulty of doing such trend analyses. Their aim is to provide baseline data against which progress in hazards mitigation can be measured. The paper is available from the NHRAIC, Institute of Behavioral Science # 6, Campus Box 482, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO 80309-0482; also through the Center’s Web site at http://www.colorado.edu/hazards. Allow sufficient time to acquire the paper!
    •
  • Flavin, Christopher. 1994. Storm warnings: Climate change hits the insurance industry. World Watch 7,6: 10-20.
  • Of the many articles of recent years on insurances and the prospects of global change, this may be the best summary to date of the issues at stake for both the industry and those affected directly by hazards. For the insurance industry -- whether or not climate change is the causal factor behind its staggering and increasing losses -- the answer to the question of whether things are getting better or worse is clearly "worse!"
    •
  • Cutter, Susan L. 1996. Societal responses to environmental hazards. International Social Science Journal 48,4 (1 December).
  • Reflects on the various definitions of vulnerability, draws out commonalities, and then applies specific aspects of vulnerability to global change and hazards.
    •
    Activity 2.1  Trends of Individual Hazards  
    Goal
    Students learn that hazard trends are influenced by processes and causes of global change. Students use what they learned in Activity 1.2 about the spatial variation of hazards to examine regional variations of a particular hazard to see if changes are consistent in all areas. Students also understand the parameters useful in describing global environmental change in order to speculate on the processes and causes of global change influencing the trend in their hazard.

    Skills

    Material Requirements Time Requirements
    1 week of out-of-class preparation of the time line, maps, and reports; approximately 15 minutes in-class discussion of findings

    Tasks
    This is a computer-based activity involving the Internet and the World Wide Web. Students gain insight into the global and regional trends of hazards occurrence and make links to global change. In studying the transformation of the earth, five specific dimensions are useful in describing global environmental change including:

  • the seriousness of the changes (magnitude),
  • the speed of changes occurring (rate),
  • the location and spread of occurrence (patterns),
  • the way they come about (processes), and
  • the reasons they happen (causes).
    •  In this assignment, students examine the first three dimensions -- magnitude, rate, and pattern. Students conduct a visual time-series analysis for a particular hazard. The choice of hazard type (e.g., flooding, chemical spills, drought) can be left to the individual or group of students. Students’ final reports should include speculation on the processes and causes of global change that may be influencing the trend in their hazard. They should produce a chart (or time line) illustrating the trend in the hazard they’ve selected. At first, they should examine the rate and magnitude of change at the global level over a selected period.

    Magnitude could be indicated by calculating an overall percentage change over the study period, and the rate of change could be calculated by dividing the overall change figure (magnitude) into 3-, 5- or 10-year intervals and calculating changes for each. From this, students can assess whether the overall change occurred in one "spurt" or whether the rate of change is periodic, or steadily increasing or decreasing.

    Students then examine regional variations in the hazard to determine whether some regions are experiencing greater or lesser degrees of change. For this purpose, students will need data at various scales (global and regional) to calculate the magnitude and rate of change overall and for each region. If this activity is adapted to focus on just one country, then students will need data at national and subnational scales. This latter option must account for the fact that different regions of a country may be characterized by different hazard occurrences. For example, a comparison of the storm frequencies in the US Northwest versus the US Northeast must consider that frequencies are at different levels to begin with.

    Regional variations could be nicely mapped, for example, by superimposing size-reduced time lines on a world (or national) map. For example, you may find numbers of severe storms for different world regions over time, make time lines for each region, and then place these charts over each region respectively. Percentage changes can be calculated separately. You may want to show students an example of this rather common way of mapping from any research article of which you are aware. The mapping of the charts will give students some basic experience with thematic mapping and help them get an overview of the regional differences in hazard changes.

    Finally, students write up the results of their investigation. Their narrative should include the following items:

    You may choose to assign this activity individually or to small groups. If the activity is done in groups of 3-4 students, one report per group should be handed in. Remind students, however, to share the responsibilities of gathering information, data analysis, and writing the final report, even if they decide to split up some of the tasks. Tell them that each student should be able to do each step of the activity. Groups can focus on a particular region or on different hazards. Feel free to let students choose their hazard and region. Alternatively, you can select five to ten hazards that you feel are well documented by accessible data or that better illustrate different hazard profiles over time.

    Be sure to verify the Internet and Web sites prior to assigning the activity because the links and addresses in Appendix A: Useful Internet/WWW Hazards Sites are subject to change. If you have not completed Activity 1.2, check there for suggestions of good entry points to Web sources on hazards. (Note that the Virtual Library lists hazards by type and by country, but only about 10 countries are offered at the time of writing.)

    If you have the time, ask students to summarize briefly their research difficulties and findings in class the day they hand in their reports. This may take about 15 minutes and could be used as a lead-in to a class session on societal vulnerability to hazards.

    If you do not have Internet access, you can adapt this activity by using the publications and data sources listed below:

    BACK

    Activity 2.2  How Vulnerable is Your Community?  
    Goal
    Students bring the concept of vulnerability closer to home by creating a qualitatively integrated assessment of their community’s vulnerability.

    Skills

    Material Requirements
  • Student Worksheet 2.2
  • access to local data sources (libraries, archives, local agencies, Internet)
    •  Time Requirements
    15-20 minutes (first class session), 50-60 minutes (second class session); 1 week of out-of-class preparation for students (data collection and report preparation)

    Tasks
    In this activity, students focus on a local hazard and determine what factors contribute to the community’s vulnerability to it. If your class is large, you may subdivide the class and have each subdivision focus on a different hazard. Each subdivision should still be large enough to form sub-groups within it to complete separate tasks. The activity is done partially in class and partially outside of it. You may either choose the hazard(s) for the students to investigate or let the students decide for themselves.

    Begin this activity by asking all students to take 3 minutes to write down some of the factors they believe contribute to a community’s vulnerability to the selected hazard. A "community" could be an entire town or a particular neighborhood in a city. Giving them some time to write down their ideas focuses students and may encourage those who usually do not contribute to speak up or have answers when you call on them.

    Collect students’ ideas on an overhead and group them into categories, such as environmental, socioeconomic, demographic, technological/structural, and/or institutional/management factors. Grouping items into these categories may produce some discussion -- a useful way to clarify the conceptual understanding of vulnerability.

    Next, use your classified list of factors that influence the degree of vulnerability to assign various tasks to students. Divide the class (or class subdivision) into groups of several students each. Each group will focus on one category of factors and investigate the actual situation of these factors in their community (described in more detail below). Also decide on a sequence in which groups report back to the class (could be done through a lottery), as they need to relate their findings to those of the previous group reporting. Knowing which factor-group goes before them, students can prepare accordingly. Students will not have to know the exact results of the other group to make these connections; rather, they should think logically about how a factor, say from the socioeconomic category, is connected with one in the demographic or institutional category, and so on. Use examples like the following (Table 8 below) to indicate to them what types of connections they should be able to make:

     
    Table 8: Examples of Connections Between Factors that Affect Vulnerability
     
    Factor Group 1 Factor Group 2  Examples of a Connection
    SOCIOECONOMIC 
         Low income    		 INSTITUTIONAL 
         Availability of shelters    		 Low-income residents may not have easy access to shelters
    DEMOGRAPHIC 
         Many minorities    		 INSTITUTIONAL 
         Availability of hazard information    		 Is hazard information (how to prepare, information what to do in case of emergency, etc.) available in all needed languages?
    TECHNOLOGICAL 
         Building codes    		 DEMOGRAPHIC 
         Housing stock    		 What portion of the population lives in homes built according to building codes (compare date of instituting building codes with age of structures)?
    ENVIRONMENTAL 
         Extent of high-hazard zone    		 INSTITUTIONAL 
         Preparedness    		 What precautions have been implemented for the high-hazard zone to prevent or contain an event? Is there an emergency plan for this area?
    Once students come back with their results, the groups will contribute to a composite picture of community vulnerability by reporting their findings (through a spokesperson) to the rest of the class. As they give their report (in no more than 5 minutes each), they should connect their findings to those of the other groups (an additional 2 minutes). The first group states where it sees potential connections to the other groups, every next group needs to connect to the findings of the previous group. This way of reporting group findings has several effects: (1) it reestablishes this activity as a class project; (2) it forces students to think in systems-terms, i.e., to see the connections between factors affecting vulnerability; (3) it forces them to pay attention to each group’s report; and (4) it challenges them to integrate newly obtained information into previously existing knowledge.

    To find information on each of the factor groups, students will have to consult a variety of sources and each group will not use the same ones. Some of the information will be quantitative, other information will be qualitative. Possible sources include Census data (demographic, socio-economic, housing), maps (geophysical, floodplain, insurance rate, land use, etc.), the Internet (city home pages, state and federal agency home pages), publications from local agencies (state emergency center, department of the environment, Geological Survey, Red Cross, city government offices, etc.), interviews with agency representatives (by phone or in person) or companies (those that pose risks in particular).

    Students will find that some of this information is rather difficult to come by, especially at the community scale, and that the information they bring together is not easily compatible in terms of scale, resolution, age of data, accuracy, etc. It is likely, however, that this activity will produce one of the most thorough assessments of vulnerability for their community. As students report their findings and qualitatively put the mosaic together, these issues will come up or should be pointed out to them. Be careful not to let students get discouraged because of the difficulties with the data. This is not a data and number-crunching activity, but one of applying an abstract concept to a local example and, in the process, demonstrating the usefulness (if not necessity) of the vulnerability concept and some of the difficulties of using it practically in hazard management. The in-class reports and piecing together of vulnerability factors should conclude with an assessment of vulnerability in light of these conceptual and practical realities.

    BACK

    Activity 2.3  The Hazards-Global Change Journal  
     
    Goal
    Students learn how different types of information sources report on hazards and global change issues by assessing the ways that editors, reporters, citizen groups, and individuals gear their writing to different audiences at different geographic scales.

    Skills

    Material Requirements Time Requirements
    2.5 weeks for the journal keeping, analysis, and preparation of a report; 25 minutes of in-class discussion

    Tasks
    In this activity, students assume the role of consultants to a news media consortium that charges them with the task of assessing the ways in which various media report on hazards and global change issues and recommending specific improvements if necessary.

    In a journal, students take notes on how hazards, global change and the links between the two are reported in various news media. Students will look at different types of media, at media that report at different scales (e.g., comparing a local, national, and international paper), and at the various means used to report these issues (words, graphics, maps, live reports, flyers, etc.).

    Hardly a week goes by without some hazard becoming public somewhere in the world. Whether one hears about it, how much one hears, and how the events are reported and explained depends on a range of factors. These factors are what students will consider in this activity and include the following:

  • What did you hear about?
  • Where did you hear about it?
  • How was it reported?
  • Who is affected and who is responsible?
  • Why did it happen?
    •  The range of news media is vast and includes local newspapers, US national newspapers (e.g., USA Today, The New York Times), and foreign national newspapers (e.g., Le Monde); any TV station (e.g., CNN, ABC, NBC, the Weather Channel); radio stations (e.g., National Public Radio, Public Radio International, BBC, any local station); information flyers from local citizen groups; weekly news magazines (e.g., Time, The Nation, In These Times); and governmental agencies (departments of environmental protection, state or federal emergency management agencies, Coast Guard, etc.). The coverage of each in terms of form, length, and content will differ depending on audience, scale, mode of communication, political orientation of the editorial board, mission, and so on. Let students choose their preferred type of news media or assign students to ensure that a range of media is covered in class. If the class is large, divide students into small groups for the activity.

    Below is a specific list of items students are asked to look for as they follow the news for the next few weeks. Remind them to take notes on the reporting every day so they’ll recall the details. Suggest that they cut out newspaper articles, make copies, or record or videotape items.

    In a five-page consulting report, students summarize the information they gathered on each of the above questions. What similarities did they detect in the ways hazards were reported? Were there any significant differences in reporting between types of hazards? Or differences in reporting between hazards that occurred in different locations of the world? Was there any kind of information about the hazards (and/or the linkage to global change) that they felt was missing, wrong (according to what they know about the hazard or location), obviously biased in any way, particularly helpful, or surprising? What made the reporting good or bad, sufficient, not enough, or too much? How did the graphics, maps, photographs influence their understanding and interpretation of the event? And finally, ask them to conclude their reports with recommendations to the consortium as to how to improve the media’s coverage of hazards and global change issues. If students so choose, they may attach an appendix of short, telling text excerpts or graphics that they think demonstrate well a problem of reporting that they point out to the consortium.

    When students hand in their reports, ask them to summarize orally some of their findings and -- by listening to other students’ summaries -- to compare how the news media differ in terms of hazard/global change reporting. Aim to draw out some generalities about what types of issues seem to be reported locally, what items make it on the national or even international agendas, how the coverage varies depending on the type of hazard, the location of the event, the political bias of the reporting source, how graphics of various sorts influence the report, and what roles reporters, editors, citizen groups, governmental agencies, and certain individuals play (individual community members, national celebrities, etc.) in determining what gets and doesn’t get reported.

    Alternative Activity
    Rather than assigning this activity in any one two-week period, you may want to take advantage of a specific recent disaster or hazard that has been in the news. Adapt the activity by asking students to focus on that one disaster and to examine various printed media (plus recall TV and radio coverage) to see how they dealt with the event. If you focus on a relatively local event, discuss why or why not the event made it into the supra-regional media.

    BACK

    Activity 2.4  Insured Until Death Do Us Part... 
     
    Goal
    Students get a sense for the difficult economic, ethical, and political choices insurers have to make in a world that witnesses increasing numbers of devastating hazard events. The activity is specific to climate change issues only. Students interpret various positions on this issue and try to find a consensus on how the insurance industry should deal with global change and growing losses from disasters.

    Skills

    Material Requirements Time Requirements
    1 hour of preparation for students before the class session; 35 minutes for the role play/discussion in class

    Tasks
    Students stage a Board of Directors meeting of representatives from various life and property insurance companies with significant coverage of populations in hazard-prone areas (restricted in this activity to the developed world). In this role play, students carry out the debate over how the insurance industry should deal with the increasing industry losses of recent years from weather-related multi-billion dollar disasters.

    Ask students to read and understand Supporting Material 2.4 and the suggested reading by Flavin (1994) before the next class session. You may suggest to students that they get together in pairs to work through and discuss this material. Tell students to be prepared to take various positions on the subject matter, such as:

    Ask students to find their preferred position on these difficult issues and to be ready to explain why they feel that way. Encourage students to think of yet alternative options the insurance industry could choose to respond to increasing losses and a changing world.

    In the class session in which the Board of Directors meeting takes place, divide the class into groups of about five students each. Each group has its own meeting of insurance executives (you may assign different companies to them to add flavor, e.g., Munich Re, Swiss Re, Reinsurance Association of America, Aetna Life, Allstate, State Farm, General Accident, Sumitomo Marine & Fire). In addition, assign one of the following roles to the students in each group: note-taker (keeps track of the discussions), facilitator/discussion leader (makes sure that the discussions are orderly), process observer (assesses the dynamics of the debate and reflects on whether all participants were equally involved in the discussion and treated fairly despite contrary opinions), spokesperson (reports some conclusions and main points of contention to the class after the debate).

    Students will act as insurance company executives who are well informed about global change matters and who came together to find a consensus position on how to deal with the increasing losses that the insurance industry has suffered over the past decade or so. Thus, everyone in each Board of Director meeting group should have a chance to state her/his own opinion, and there should be time to raise the "if’s and but’s" about each position represented in the group. Near the end of the debate, the group should attempt to find common ground. If it can’t arrive at a consensus, students should be able to state what the main obstacles were.

    The discussion should take about 15 minutes, followed by short summary reports from each group through each group’s spokesperson. During the discussions, the instructor goes from group to group listening in on the discussions, playing devil’s advocate if necessary by throwing provocative statements into the meeting if it appears that the group agrees too easily. After each group has reported to the class, the instructor summarizes the consensus positions and main points of contention.