Arabella Fraser

Developing Frameworks to Understand Disaster Causation: From Forensic Disaster Investigation to Risk Root Cause Analysis

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 calls for science to support policy move toward more holistic solutions to disaster risk. This paper outlines an original framework to promote inter-disciplinary research into disaster causation, identifying the basis for holistic solutions. The PEARL Risk Root Cause Analysis framework responds to limits identified in the established FORensic INvestigations of disasters (FORIN) approach to root cause analysis. The paper documents a systematic review of the FORIN approach as a starting point for the development of the PEARL framework. The proposed PEARL framework offers a broad and adaptable conceptual, methodological and practical approach. In particular, we demonstrate the centrality of governance, including the role of disaster risk management in risk creation, of bringing historical insights into contemporary and future scenarios planning and of integrating research methods. These core elements can assist in repositioning science to better support the goals of the Sendai Framework.

The missing politics of urban vulnerability: The state and the co-production of climate risk

Studies of urban disaster and climate change risk have increasingly invoked governmentality as a theoretical frame for understanding how urban risk governance functions. This article argues that the use of governmentality in this context can advance political readings of urban vulnerability to climate risk. However, using the idiom of co-production from Science and Technology Studies, I question current treatments of the politics of expertise in the urban risk governance literature, highlighting the need to understand the political commitments and practices that shape the implementation of purportedly technical risk knowledge and their particular manifestation in the context of informal, urban settlements. A case study from Bogota, Colombia, links the science and practice of state risk management to vulnerability outcomes in informal urban settlements. It shows how a new suite of qualitative methodological approaches are revealing of the power-knowledge dynamics in governance that influence vulnerability, and their differential social effects.