This paper develops a novel probabilistic quantitative risk assessment (QRA) model to evaluate the casualty risk combining frequency and consequence of all accident scenarios triggered by long-term work zone crashes.
It weaves together elements of many other active-shooter incidents that have horrified Americans in recent years, and highlighted the unusual frequency of mass casualty events in this country in comparison with almost every other nation in the world.
The frequency of multiple casualty incidents (MCIs), such as the September 11 World Trade Center terrorist attacks, hurricane Katrina in 2005, swine flu pandemics in 2009, and most recently the earthquake and its resultant tsunami in Northern Japan, has changed health care workers' perspective of disaster preparedness.
Rather than worrying about the definition of terrorism and its motives on the front-end, we should more broadly define mass casualty events for their tragic frequency and for building a broader set of tools (legal, clinical, political, financial and, at times, military) in mounting a global defense.
As one example, it is commonly but incorrectly assumed by the public that tornado casualties cluster with the highest frequency in 'tornado alley,' including areas of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas, because of the relatively higher frequency of late-spring tornado events there (Erickson et al. 2010).
For gun-control advocates, the proliferation of military-style weapons -- and high-capacity ammunition clips that greatly increase their lethality -- is directly responsible for the rising frequency of high-casualty mass shootings.
Frequency distributions of casualties are predominantly skewed positively, with the median value being the usually accepted descriptor of such distributions rather than the mean.
But Mr. Murtha spoke of mounting casualties and lagging recruiting, the rising frequency of insurgent attacks, stagnant oil production and lack of clean water.
This problem becomes more serious when the frequency distribution of predicted casualties at a treatment site shows clear positive skewness with an increasing difference between the predicted mean and median values.
He quickly activated a special radio frequency, calling in a "mass casualty incident".
