Understanding urban risks as encompassing socio-ecological phenomena.

Understanding urban risks as encompassing socio-ecological phenomena.

[SHS:GEO] Humanities and Social Sciences/Geography

Place-based approach

contextual framework

performative risks

vulnerability dynamics

epistemology

The multi-scale biophysical, social and political-economic causal factors that shape damages in the case of landslides in Caracas and Quito can be assessed with the PAR model. But we need to put the stress on two more dimensions that could improve it. 1- Representations and discourses on risks, its management and policies, contribute to the framing of vulnerability. Timeline for risk construction is not unidirectional. Risks are a never-end becoming process. 2- Humanizing environment (therefore shaping risks) relies on the way human - environment interactions are addressed by people, institutions or even researchers. Epistemological backgrounds do matter. The territorialisation of risks can be a useful conceptual framework to figure out the main vulnerability drivers in a place. It corresponds to the ways risks are produced (multi-layered vulnerability); to the implications of risks (as instruments that shape vulnerability); and to the ways different actors conceptualize risks (the framing of research object influences vulnerability).

Rebotier, Julien

ICARUS II conference - Climate vulnerability and adaptation

2011-05-04

ENG

conference, seminar, workshop communication

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00601771

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/60/17/71/PDF/Rebotier_Oral_Presentation_ICARUS_II.pdf

http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/60/17/71/PDF/Rebotier_Paper_ICARUS2_1.pdf

Ann Arbor

United States