Vulnerability Assessment. How to Protect a Business Premise from Hazards?

Essay , 2019 , 10 Seiten , Note: 2

Ingenieurwissenschaften - Bauingenieurwesen

The purpose of this paper is to provide a vulnerability management assessment for ABC business premise of the company ABC. This paper argues that while risk causes harm to lives and property in a business, vulnerability is what makes the impact of such a risk to become extremely devastating or magnified.

It has been established through research that, at times, risks or accidents might occur but without much impact on living or non-living things. This is to argue that the accident, for example, fails to get the attention of the population settlements it was intended to harm. For example, when a bomb explodes, the expectation is that it should harm most people in the building where it has exploded if not all of them. However, when the building is bomb-proof, and well-built, its inhabitants will not even realize the that the bomb exploded. In other words, they will not feel the impact of the bomb. This can only happen when people and things are not vulnerable. A system’s vulnerability can be related to the physical and social as well as economic aspects that it has.

Therefore, the paper covers the reasons why vulnerability assessment must be conducted in the business premise, components of vulnerability assessment tool specific to this case and the steps that can be taken to mitigate the identified vulnerabilities.

Table of contents

Introduction

Purpose of the Paper

Discussion on the Site Selection and the Rationale for the Site Selected

Components of Vulnerability Assessment Tool

Hazards

Exposure

Sensitivity to harm

Components of Vulnerability Assessment Tool Specific to ABC

Mitigation Measures

Conclusion

References

Appendices

Introduction

It has been established through research that, at times, risks or accidents might occur but without much impact on living or non-living things. This is to argue that the accident, for example, fails to get the attention of the population settlements it was intended to harm. For example, when a bomb explodes, the expectation is that it should harm most people in the building where it has exploded if not all of them. However, when the building is bomb-proof, and well-built, its inhabitants will not even realize the that the bomb exploded. In other words, they will not feel the impact of the bomb. This can only happen when people and things are not vulnerable. A system’s vulnerability can be related to the physical and social as well as economic aspects that it has. According to Shakeel & Becken (2015), vulnerability has become a function of character and magnitude as well as hazard’s variation rate to which a system gets exposed. It also includes the system’s sensitivity as well as adaptive capacity. Shakeel & Becken (2015) describes vulnerability as the propensity to be adversely affected which encompasses various concepts such as sensitivity or susceptibility of being harmed as well as inadequate capacity of coping and adapting. Vulnerability can be looked at in terms of overlapping factors. These factors overlap when each produces risks. They include hazards, exposure and sensitivity to harm and to be harmed.

Purpose of the Paper

The purpose of this paper is to provide a vulnerability management assessment for ABC business premise. This paper argues that while risk causes harm to lives and property in a business, vulnerability is what makes the impact of such a risk to become extremely devastating or magnified. The paper covers the reasons why vulnerability assessment must be conducted in the business premise, components of vulnerability assessment tool specific to this case and the steps that can be taken to mitigate the identified vulnerabilities.

Discussion on the Site Selection and the Rationale for the Site Selected

ABC is an event hosting business. This implies that it is booked by event planners for a fee so that they can hold their events in this premise. The building therefore hosts, from time to time, various classes of society as they get to grace various events. Apart from having many rooms including the main hall where events’ hosting takes place, this building contains many gates that probably many not be made known to the people coming in for the functions. ABC is a 20th Century building that apparently does not have the modern exit techniques in an explosion for example, occurs. As a result, it does not have very large windows and doors as would be expected of a place hosting large events. In addition, the building is located at the town center, which means it is in the middle of many other business premises. However, it is large and can easily be identified to the outside eye. There are no ready emergency staff and apparently the event planners rarely follow the law.

Various factors informed the rationale for analyzing the vulnerability to risk that ABC business premise has. The government requires that all businesses comply with the vulnerability assessment requirement. There is need to establish the level of vulnerability of every building that is used as a business premise or workplace. This is because apart from the owner’s life, it hosts other people. The lives present at such a building makes the vulnerability assessment exercise important. Most risks lead to not only loss of property bust also loss of lives (Shakeela & Becken, 2015). It therefore means that assessing the vulnerability of a building to such risks is an important exercise that cannot be overlooked. The vulnerability assessment aslo has advantage in law in that at least it can inform the government authorities that the business owner had attempted to minimize vulnerability and the law may be lenient with such business owner. It is important to note that in event hosting businesses, some occasions lead to loss of lives. For example, there could be an explosion, but people were not well informed of different exit gates or the house is not safe from bombs. The government will charge the event planner for the loss of lives and property and for not showing the clients the emergency exit gates. This is why there is need to always assess the vulnerability of a place to be able to effectively mitigate, adapt and respond to security challenges. Assessment of vulnerability exceeds mere measuring the potential harm brought by events resulting from risks.

Components of Vulnerability Assessment Tool

As mentioned earlier, the vulnerability assessment determines the extent to which an environment can become vulnerable to risks. There are imports parts of vulnerability such as hazards, exposure and sensitivity to harm.

Hazards

Vulnerabilities emanating from hazards are those that, even though they have not caused any harm, they possess the potential of doing so (Lujala, Lein & Rød, 2015). Business hazards become disaster agents based on what they may do to human settlements and the environment. An example is extreme cases of congestion inside ABC building. This means that even though congestion does cause deaths or injuries instantly, it has the potential to do so if by accident something goes wrong during the event.

Exposure

Overgaard, Kearney & Hoffmann (2014) defines exposure as the degree of the stress that a business hazard, for example congestion can bring upon a particular unit. It can take the form of long-term conditions or changes in variability of congestion, which includes the magnitude as well as extreme events’ frequency. There are a number of elements to consider when referring to exposure (Overgaard, Kearney & Hoffmann, 2014). They include things, which can be affected by the hazard such as populations, resources and property as well as other economic values. Considering the elements of this vulnerability, it is clear that it influences the impacts of risks greatly. For example, congestion may collapse ABC building as it could also affect the level of earnings of the owner of the building or business or both. It has the capacity as well, of leading to various deaths of the stakeholders in the events. However, even if the ABC gets congested to the brim but it has large windows and doors, the effect of the congestion will not be as intensive as when such doors and windows are small in size. When the windows and doors are small, escape in case of accident will be hindered and many guests can die of suffocation. This implies that ABC will be totally exposed to the hazard and the magnitude of vulnerability will be increased.

[...]

• Note: 2
• Autor: Boniface Okoth (Autor:in)
• Erscheinungsjahr: 2019
• Seiten: 10
• Katalognummer: V510757
• ISBN (eBook): 9783346094155
• ISBN (Buch): 9783346094162
• Sprache: Englisch
• Schlagworte: vulnerability, assessment, protect, business, premise, hazards