The whole is greater than the sum of its parts: a holistic graph-based assessment approach for natural hazard risk of complex systems

摘要

Assessing the risk of complex systems to natural hazards is an important but challenging problem. In today's intricate socio-technological world,characterized by strong urbanization and technological trends, the connections and interdependencies between exposed elements are crucial. Thesecomplex relationships call for a paradigm shift in collective risk assessments, from a reductionist approach to a holistic one. Most commonly, therisk of a system is estimated through a reductionist approach, based on the sum of the risk evaluated individually at each of its elements. Incontrast, a holistic approach considers the whole system to be a unique entity of interconnected elements, where those connections are taken intoaccount in order to assess risk more thoroughly. To support this paradigm shift, this paper proposes a holistic approach to analyse risk in complexsystems based on the construction and study of a graph, the mathematical structure to model connections between elements. We demonstrate thatrepresenting a complex system such as an urban settlement by means of a graph, and using the techniques made available by the branch of mathematicscalled graph theory, will have at least two advantages. First, it is possible to establish analogies between certain graph metrics (e.g. authority,degree and hub values) and the risk variables (exposure, vulnerability and resilience) and leverage these analogies to obtain a deeper knowledge ofthe exposed system to a hazard (structure, weaknesses, etc.). Second, it is possible to use the graph as a tool to propagate the damage into thesystem, for not only direct but also indirect and cascading effects, and, ultimately, to better understand the risk mechanisms of natural hazards incomplex systems. The feasibility of the proposed approach is illustrated by an application to a pilot study in Mexico City.