When a person suffers an unexpected injury, risk, and liability immediately come to mind. How did the accident happens, and who or what was at fault? Answers to these questions help determine the injuries’ value to ensure the harmed party is made whole again after the accident. Plus, initiatives are taken to reduce risk and improve conditions to avoid future injuries and problems. Defining the hidden risks of urban life helps determine ways to fix these problems and how much an injury is worth during settlement negotiations. However, to ensure fairness, it is crucial to uncover the blind spots to reduce future risks, improve safety initiatives, and have valid data to fairly compensate injured parties.
What is a Blind Spot?
A blind spot occurs when a lack of data is collected to make valid conclusions about a region and what happens to its population. Data about health issues, risk, injuries, natural disasters, and other occurrences is crucial to developing future programs and initiatives. Plus, occurrences in one region have an impact on surrounding areas, as well as the rest of the world. Harnessing accurate data is the first step toward making crucial changes to improve conditions around the world. Additionally, placing a value on injuries and illnesses ensures injured parties can become whole again.
Unrecorded Information
One of the most significant blind spots is the large scale of premature death and illness in urban places that remains unrecorded. Illness and serious injuries are also largely unrecorded in many urban areas around the world. A lack of data makes it difficult for insurance companies, personal injury attorneys, and victims to place a fair value on injuries resulting from another’s negligence.
Informal Settlements
Another blind spot is a lack of health data in certain informal settlements, including Asia and Africa. While the settlements may resemble urban areas in population and operation, they are not formally on the map. As a result, there is no health data to determine patterns and values based on local occurrences and history. Plus, further urbanization of these areas leads to additional risks.
Lack of Local Records
Pertinent health data is present in most countries, but this information is not localized. Without local records, serious health problems related to regional issues often go unrecorded. Local health records help develop a course of action for street, district, and urban center problems that may otherwise go unaddressed, leading to additional issues.
Overlooking Everyday Risks
Based on the region and a myriad of other factors, certain health issues are everyday risks. A lack of discussion and data means these risks could be overlooked, despite being inherently present in the area. A failure to discuss parasitic and infectious diseases occurs in informal settlements, where relevant data is rarely collected. Issues in unsettled areas can quickly become global risks when unattended.
Impact of Disasters
Formal documentation records large disasters but does not account for other disasters that also impact local health and well-being. Smaller floods and disasters also cause injuries, premature death, and poverty but go unrecorded. As a result, the issues that arise from smaller disasters often go unaddressed until they become major problems.
Understanding global issues is crucial to develop programs to reduce risk and minimize health problems and injuries. Collecting valid data is the first step toward improving urban areas’ conditions and ensuring fair settlements for those who were injured along the way.
Above Photo by Daniel Bendig from Pexels