Disaster Probabilities
You are a national disaster manager.
Your mandate is to take action to reduce the impacts of droughts on people.
Some of the actions in your portfolio are:
-
Delivering food
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Delivering drought tolerant seeds
The agricultural season is when most of the food that people eat is produced. It is roughtly July, August, September (JAS). Your agency is required to act if the number of food insecure people rises above officially defined levels. Your agency uses an official Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) that reports how many food insecure people there are at the end of the year in December.
Below is the food security data available.
Food Insecurity by Year
| Year | IPC-Number of Food Insecure People |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 41,685 |
| 2018 | 11,898 |
| 2017 | 53,421 |
| 2016 | 24,344 |
| 2015 | 32,423 |
Your agency has two official requirements in place.
Rule 1. Extreme drought: You must take action if there are more than 50,000 food insecure people
Rule 2. Moderate drought: You must take action if there are more than 40,000 food insecure people
Lets warm up with some practical and slightly tedious questions before getting to the challenging ones requiring your professional judgement and official mandates and responsibilities.
Take a look at the IPC table and your rules for action.
Look at what years exceed or fall below the thresholds for action, and then answer the following questions.