WorldRiskReport 2012: focus - environmental degradation and disasters

The WorldRiskIndex seeks answers to the following questions: How probable is an extreme natural event, and will it affect people?
How vulnerable are the people to the natural hazards? To what extent can societies cope with acute disasters? Is a society taking preventive measures to face natural hazards to be reckoned with in the future?

The concept of the WorldRiskIndex, with its modular structure, was developed jointly by scientists and development experts. The report ranks the risk of 173 countries. The calculation of the Index is carried out via the four components:

• Exposure towards natural hazards such as earthquakes, cyclones, flooding, drought and sea level rise
• Susceptibility depending on infrastructure, nutrition, housing situation and economic framework conditions
• Coping capacities depending on governance, medical services and social and material coverage
• Adaptive capacities relating to forthcoming natural events, to climate change and to other challenges.

The Report aims to replace what has as a rule been a short-term observation of disasters with a development approach: Aspects such
as prevention, the protection of particularly susceptible groups and risk management have to be at the forefront of analyses and
future measures. The social, ecological and economic dimensions of risk are combined with classical hazard analyses of natural
events in the WorldRiskReport. This enables risk assessment to be extended.