Risk perception in emergency planning environments

Catastrophic events which are able to generate great emergency situations involving very large areas and huge networks are usually characterized by very low values of occurrence probability. This leads us to believe that individual risk perception is consequently and most likely affected by errors and it is also rather far from the effective risk level. Therefore, a priori assignment of an event risk factor is not very correct, because it can lead to large misevaluations. The risk measure of an event is a research field where some concepts belonging to psychometrics, physics and sociology are often interacting, if not mutually overlapped. This paper deals with a relatively new approach to individual risk perception and evaluation based on Prospect Theory and shows its applications for disaster and emergency management in a transport network. The main differences and advantages with other more traditional approaches are also displayed and discussed. Finally, some practical examples are referred to in order to support the strengths of Prospect Theory potential applications.