Chapter 8 Hazard Perception and Geography

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter deals with the hazard perception and geography. Perception plays a central role in explaining how risk, uncertainty, and values enter into the ways by which societies and individual's debate and cope with existing natural hazards and the introduction of new hazards associated with technological change. It reviews the current state of understanding, highlights key geographical contributions, assesses the broadening of perception research that is in process, and explores prospects for a more integrative understanding. One of the remarkable features of the intellectual history of hazard analysis is the large proportion of all research devoted to understanding how individuals and various groups evaluate and respond to the hazards of nature and technology. In addition, from initial geographical and psychological studies of hazard, much became known of human perception of a wide range of natural hazards. More recent efforts have extended the analysis from natural to technological hazards, from choice-centered to constraint-centered analyses, from cognitive psychology to anthropology and political science, and from disciplinary to more integrative perspectives. Meanwhile, the long-existing concern in geography to understand how human societies behave in their encounters with diverse physical and cultural environments with sensitive appreciation for the rich fabric of social meaning and complex of hazards at particular regions and places remains an enduring goal.