Assessment of Risks, Efficiency, Costs, and Gain of Natural Hazard (Catastrophe) Consequences Prevention Based on Geophysical Monitoring

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively estimate the efficiency of forecasting hazards and catastrophic processes induced by high‐energy terrestrial sources, based on an integrated monitoring of the state of geophysical processes. Using methods of mathematical statistics and detection theory, relations have been obtained that can be used to calculate the coefficients of the efficiency of warning of catastrophes and the costs associated with a predicted event. The hazard (catastrophe) prevention efficiency coefficient has been shown to be dependent only on the conditional probability of missing a hazard. The relative cost parameter is a function of five parameters: a priori probability of the unwanted event, a conditional false alarm probability, a conditional missed detect probability, relative costs in the case of false alarm probability, and costs to minimize consequences of the hazardous event in case it has been accurately forecast. The gain from organizing geophysical monitoring has been estimated for a few dangers and catastrophes of terrestrial nature. The gain has been shown to be significant in many cases. An energy‐based classification of the most important natural sources of hazards and catastrophes, as well as their consequences, is proposed or improved.