Head: Prof. Yale Herer, Technion

As the name implies, this group will focus on research related to assessing risks and managing the same in the time frame before an emergency/disaster occurs. Risk, simply defined is the probability of something occurring multiplied by the extent of the consequences. Risk in the emergency/disaster domain is rarely easily evaluated and agreed upon by different stakeholders. Indeed, there is more often than not a lack of knowledge associated with key elements in evaluating risk. Moreover, the same consequences can be viewed differently by different populations.
Risk assessment and management is key in ensuring infrastructure reliability and survivability in states of emergencies/disasters. The omnipresent infrastructure is even more important when an emergency/disaster strikes than on a daily basis.
A non-exhaustive list of research areas that interest the group members is:
- The effect of emergency/disaster situations on mistakes made by key personal in the emergency/disaster team and the effect of these mistakes on risk.
- The importance of assessing the fact that ordinary people play a large role in any emergency/disaster
- The effect of communication (or more correctly, the lack of communication) between different agencies on risk.
- How to measure risk when there is a lack of information regarding key parameters.
- How to communicated risk to the public.
- Understanding the human factor, the risk perception, on emergency/disaster events and adding it to Risk assessments models.
- Developing simulations for managing complex emergency/disaster events