Contemporary risks

In recent years, the concept of risk has acquired increasing relevance within scientific, political, and social debates, expanding the range of its manifestations and overlapping quantitative and qualitative factors. Referring to the definition developed by the Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Coordinator (UNDRO, 1980), the concept of risk concerns the probability that a hazardous natural event will cause losses or damage to people, material assets, and social and economic activities. From this perspective, risk is associated with the potential effects generated by a natural phenomenon considered dangerous, which may include fatalities, injuries, social and economic impacts, and, more generally, the erosion of the value of exposed elements. This definition is operationalised through the formula: R = H × Vu × Va, where H represents hazard, Vu the vulnerability of exposed elements, and Va their value (Leone, 2015). Hazard indicates the probability that an event of a given intensity will occur within a specific area and temporal interval. Vulnerability corresponds to the share of anthropogenic elements that would be unable to withstand such an event, including the estimate of potential losses in terms of human lives. Exposed value refers to the extent of goods and people subjected to risk, quantifiable both in terms of human lives potentially involved and in terms of foreseeable economic damages. Within this formulation, hazard can be described exclusively through a probabilistic approach. In this volume, the notion of exposed value is extended to multiple categories of assets, both material and immaterial, recognising how contemporary risks operate on different levels and produce diversified effects across a variety of places and scales. The risks described do not constitute an exhaustive list of all existing forms of risk but instead represent a set of categories directly or indirectly connected to those examined in the case studies presented in the following chapters.