CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH

Geography 600: Seminar in Regional Geography

Theme for Spring 2000: California as Hazard

Instructor Information:

Instructor: Dr. C.M. Rodrigue

E-mail Address: rodrigue@csulb.edu

Home Page: http://www.csulb.edu/~rodrigue

Telephones: (526) 985-4895 or -4977

Office: LA4 206A

Mailbox: LA4 106

Office Hours: TTh 12:15-2 p.m.; Th 6-7 p.m.

Course Description:

Prerequisite: Consent of instructor. Regional methods of study common to geographic research and their utilization in developing regional concepts.

Theme for Spring 2000: California, the hazardousness of a place^* and the imagination of disaster^**.

This semester, we shall examine hazardousness as a defining quality of this land "very close to the side of the Terrestrial Paradise" (in the words of García Ordoñez de Montalvo, around 1510). California is distinguished by its rather complete catalogue of calamities: earthquakes, wildfires, floods, droughts, mudslides, volcanic eruptions, avalanche, subsidence, tsunamis, and even tornadoes, and an impressive list of technological hazards (as though we were dissatisfied with the hazards offered by Nature). Californians are at risk to many of these events, natural and technological, but we vary in our vulnerability to them, in ways both obvious and subtle.

In this seminar, we'll read and discuss articles defining the physical dynamics underlying several hazards, the social vulnerability to extreme events, and societal options to mitigate them and to cope with the emergencies they create. We'll also look at the very contentious relationship between risk assessment science (the identification and specification of a hazard) and risk management policy (creating those societal options).

^* From the title of Ken Hewitt's book, The Hazardousness of a Place: A Regional Ecology of Damaging Events

^** From the subtitle of Mike Davis' book, Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster

Seminar Objectives

• To become familiar with standard methods of risk assessment
• To develop an understanding of their limitations
• To understand the value-laden and political world of the risk manager and how it affects acceptance of the limitations of risk assessment science
• To discuss these issues in the context of several case studies of natural and technological hazards in the State of California
• To understand multiple hazard as a defining attribute of the California region and Californians' sense of place
• To afford an opportunity to do advanced research in the area of hazards and the California region
• To model the interdisciplinary approach necessary to understand hazards through the contributions of physical geographers, human geographers, technical geographers, and planners in the seminar
• To enhance professional presentation skills
• To introduce web authorship as an increasingly important medium for sharing research

Grading:

Grading is based on quality of participation in seminar discussions (including evidence of completing all assigned readings and preparing for discussion), an annotated bibliography on an individual topic of interest, and preparation of a paper in web format and presentation on a risk assessment and risk management issue in California. Each component will be weighted approximately equally in determining final grades. If notified ahead of time about unavoidable conflicts (such as religious obligations), I will not penalize one excusable absence in your participation score, nor will I penalize a documented emergency that precluded advance notice. While I can assign the full range of grades, I expect that graduate students will preponderantly earn "A's" and "B's": Please do not disappoint my expectation.

Tentative List of Topics (not in any particular order)

• Risk assessment science
  • Goals and processes of dealing with inherently uncertain situations
  • Epistemological problems
  • Type I and Type II errors
• Risk management policy
  • Safeguard human life at all costs
  • Minimize regulatory burden
• How policy preferences affect risk assessment
  • Hearing only epistemologically most rigorous results can increase dangers of a Type I error and raise risk to human life
  • Epistemological tolerance raises risk of a Type II error and imposes opportunity costs
  • Costs and benefits of creating a firewall between assessment and management
• The magnitude and frequency issue
  • Reducing recurrent low level hazards can raise vulnerability to catastrophic events
  • Costs versus benefits of mitigating low probability but high impact events
• Case studies
  • Natural hazards
    • Earthquakes
    • Floods and storms
    • Fires
    • Droughts
  • Technological hazards
    • Chemical regulation and the EPA
    • Space exploration and plutonium generators

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Document maintained by Dr. Rodrigue
Last revision: 01/27/00