By C R de Freitas, School of Geography and Environmental Science, University of Auckland, PB 92019, Auckland, New Zealand
Abstract
Natural hazards causing disasters that lead to human suffering are as much a product of the social, political and economic environment as they are of the natural environment. It follows, therefore, that the risk associated with natural hazards is in part a social construct that, as Young (1998) has pointed out, is perceived differently by all of us and must be defined with this mind. For example, risk is defined by Emergency Management Australia (1995) as the perceived likelihood of given levels of harm.
