14-1190b-innovation-managing-risk-evidence

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THE SOCIAL SCIENCE
PERSPECTIVE
We know more than we think we do. Through research by
social scientists over the past few decades, we have learnt
a great deal about how people gather information on risks
such as flooding, how they respond to it, and how it informs
their actions as individuals and as groups of citizens. But it
is hard to translate these insights — some of which have
now been known for a long time — into practical advice for
individuals and policymakers, mainly because the lessons are
that risk is often denied and action is rather less than might
be expected. This is a key challenge facing decision makers.
Denial remains a common reaction from those at risk
of flooding, even among those with flood experience. The
oft-repeated suggestion is that “It will not happen to me”,
and “I will not be here when the next flood comes”. These
reactions are not driven principally by ignorance, but by an
anxiety about future flooding that people want to minimize 1 .
The language of risk is also a barrier: public understanding of
return periods or even annual probabilities is poor.
Whatever the risks, the decisions that individuals and
communities make are influenced by the traditional social
contract with the state: “We pay our taxes and we expect
the government to act”. Communities at risk are unlikely
to respond with community risk-reducing initiatives and
innovations until after a major event — known as the
“prisoner of experience” phenomenon — rather than in
anticipation of a hazard. Moreover, these responses are often
limited to areas where existing social capital is extensive,
and in relatively affluent and predominantly rural areas
rather than inner cities.
Flood events themselves are often followed by a loss of
trust in those who manage risk, as well as dissatisfaction at
the apparent lack of interventions to reduce risk, which is
influenced by the perceived unfairness of the governance
process. People have a poor understanding of ‘who is
in charge’, which is unsurprising given the fragmented
governance arrangements related to the different sources
of flooding (rivers; surface water; groundwater; the sea).
They also have a poor grasp of statutory duties and available
resources, and of the time taken to implement interventions.
Small-scale remedies by individuals or community groups are
not trusted to be effective.
Research shows that it is important for decision makers
to present the information on quantifiable risks clearly, and
to put it in context. Uncertainties need to be explained, and
risk-reducing measures ‘owned’ by those at risk rather than
imposed upon them. Denial needs to be understood, rather
than brushed aside. Trust in the skills of those in authority
— and those with special knowledge and expertise — needs
to be carefully nurtured. Human behaviours need to be
understood and seen in their cultural context — specifically,
political cultures, religious cultures and national cultures
— along with the historic tolerance to risk that this brings.
We must also appreciate the types of issues that arise when
science gets deeply embedded in culturally contentious
areas (such as climate change), and how these issues play
out in the various international governance structures for
risk and innovation.
THE ANALYSTS’ PERSPECTIVE
“All models are wrong — some are useful”
(George Box, 1987)
‘Risk’ is a rich term, including notions of the chance of harm,
consequence and opportunity. In all but the simplest of
settings, judgement or intuition are not enough to establish
a meaningful understanding of present and future flood risk,
so decision makers must rely upon models.
Flood risk management resources are limited and, even
if we wanted to, it is not possible to reduce all flood risks
for all people to a common level 2 . Any biases within the
modelling approach that leads to an over- or under-estimate
of risk therefore have the potential to misdirect these
limited resources. But in recent years, flood risk analysts
have made significant progress in developing models to
support better design, planning and emergency response
decisions. This has involved reducing modelling bias and
incompleteness. But in doing so, a number of significant
issues and challenges associated with understanding risk and
managing it appropriately continue to be exposed 3 .
The ‘whole system’ challenge
The flood risk system consists of all of the important sources
of flooding, all of the potential receptors that may be affected
(either directly or indirectly), and the performance of the
intervening system of physical pathways (the land surfaces,
channels, beaches and engineered channels, defences,
barriers and pumps). It also includes the interactions with
society (individuals; emergency response teams; businesses
and so on) and the broader interaction with physical,
ecological and human systems. Traditional modelling
approaches have typically focused on individual components
of this ‘whole system’, and thereafter we have tended to
manage the analyzed risks and not the complex reality.
Whole system thinking provides a significant challenge
to the analyst. The chance of harm is not, as it is often
mistakenly supposed, equivalent to the chance that a
particular storm event occurs. Equally, the consequence
of a flood is not simply the direct material damage, but
reflects the inherent susceptibility of a receptor to a flood,
its ability to recover unaided in a timely manner, and the
value society places on the harm incurred. Whole system
modelling approaches are in their infancy but are now, at
least, recognized as a worthwhile endeavour.
The fallacy of reductionism and the truth of
uncertainty
The behaviour of flood risk systems is intrinsically stochastic