Searching for resilience or building social capacities for flood risks?

摘要

While for a long time the notion of resilience has only been known to some well-informed students of ecology or psychology, over the last decade it has started its triumphal march and is now referred to in academic discourses and policy documents as a matter of course. The reasons for making its way into such different fields as (flood) risk management, urban studies, spatial planning or the fight against terrorism are not easy to identify; however, some observers argue that it is regarded as a response to an increasing awareness of uncertainties and an acknowledgment of the dynamic nature of social and natural processes that can no longer be treated as an ephemeral condition societies can overcome by improved management activities or by scientific progress. On the contrary, uncertainties and dynamics are seen as a constant companion of our times. Traditionally flood risk assessments, for instance, have been calculated based on historically observed flood frequency statistics and return periods, following what might be termed a 'classical' approach to risk analysis. However, it is increasingly acknowledged that much of what is termed flood risk management is, in fact, uncertainty management. Particularly for catastrophic flood events, data on likely outcomes and consequences are approximate at best. Furthermore, in the face of climate change the past is considered no longer as a reliable guide to the future, and flood risk assessment, like water resource management more generally, can no longer be based on the classical assumption of stationarity (Milly et al., 2008).