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Acknowledgements
Introduction
The purpose of this handbook
Background
Disaster planning
World wide trends
National response
Principles of Disaster Management

The 9 step process
Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 6
Step 7
Step 8
Step 9

Extra Tools - a summary
Tool 1
Tool 2
Tool 3
Tool 4
Tool 5
Tool 6
Tool 7
Tool 8
Tool 9

STEP 5 - Assessing Risk: who & what will be affected?

Once the major hazards have been identified, it is important to determine the likelihood of each risk occurring for communities. Some hazards could be catastrophic but are unlikely to occur. On the other hand, some hazards, while not as potentially serious, may be a risk on a more regular basis.

There are some key steps to identifying and assessing risk:
• who or what could be affected? These are the vulnerable sectors.
• how could people and other sectors be affected? This is the description.

Vulnerable sectors - who and what could be affected?

There are many ways that the community may be affected by hazards. It is important to consider hazards across all sectors of the community.

example

Example of who and what could be affected by hazards

Sector	Element
Community	Women and children Other people Houses Possessions Income Loss of food sources Epidemics
Economy	Infrastructure (especially critical services and infrastructure) Agriculture Critical industries
Environment	Forests Land quality Air and water quality Government Vegetation Animals - including rare species Agricultural land and livestock
Government	Communications Critical services and infrastructure

See Tool 5 Risk Assessment Process for a way to chart your risk assessments in the extra tools.

CHECKLIST
Step seven

Have you worked out:		Actions:
	Who and what will be affected?	Identify sectors of the community ‘at risk’ from hazards Describe how severely each sector could be affected.

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