Risk dynamics: unraveling the role of socio-techno-nature interactions

Abstract:

In disaster risk reduction, there is still a lack of methods capturing the dynamics of risk emerging from the complex interplay between physical and social processes. Two examples of these dynamics are the learning and levee effects. The learning effect is about the empirical evidence that more frequent hazardous events are often associated with decreasing societal vulnerability, e.g. human adaptation. The levee effect is about the stylized fact (discussed already by White in the 1940s) that less frequent hazardous events (sometimes paradoxically due to the implementation of risk prevention structures, such as levees) often lead to increasing societal vulnerability. We posit that current projections of future flood risk are not realistic because most analytical frameworks do not capture the aforementioned dynamics. Then, we propose an interdisciplinary approach whereby two-way interactions and feedbacks between social and physical processes are explicitly accounted for (Di Baldassarre et al., 2014; 2015). Here we show an application of this approach with a focus on flood risk changes, and demonstrate its capability to capture and explain the dynamics emerging from socio-techno-nature interactions. Lastly, the potentials and limitations of the proposed approach to assess risk dynamics in a rapidly changing environment are critically discussed.