The main task in the present paper was to determine a theoretical model and an adequate method for the assessment of the social impact of risk scenarios. Because of its uninterrupted potential threat, any disaster can be called infra-disaster. The defining treat of infrahazards refears to the fact that a potential disaster will have an impact on what the experts used to call the social and territorial “surface systems”. The surface effects of an infrahazard are the relevant data to be used for an early warning upon a future disaster. A theoretical construction and a correlative methodology are requested to give a cognitive support for the science and management of infra-hazards. The present paper insists on these issues. We can say that a disaster is always here only that, in the phase of its latency, the parameters go down to a threshold close to zero. It acts like “waves in the physical world” excepting that what is waving in this case is the latent underlying hazard (disaster), or infra-hazard (infra-disaster) and, of course, it will be confirmed, as already mentioned, by its effects on the “surface systems”. The infra-catastrophic model of analysis asks therefore to draw the maps of infra-hazards as part of an early warning approach. That is the second objective of the present paper. This type of maps will include certain parameters meant to measure territorial distances of the different areas from the disaster’s hotspot. Such an approach appears to be an essential pathway to a precautionary management of disasters. In conclusion, the present paper focuses on this new approach of disasters’ social impact which is based on the analytical model of infra-hazards.

Keywords: infra-hazards, hotspot zones, social impact of a risk scenario, latent underlying hazard, hectic cycles.

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