S. Hochrainer-Stigler

Understanding farmers' intention and behavior regarding water conservation in the Middle-East and North Africa: A case study in Iran

There is a high risk of serious water shortages in Middle-East and North African countries. To decrease this threat water conservation strategies are gaining overall importance and one main focus is now on farmers behavior. Among other dimensions it is assumed that normative issues play an important role in predicting environmental oriented intentions and actual actions. To empirically test the possible interactions the Theory of Planned Behavior was used, revised and expanded for the specific case on water management issues and applied to Iranian farmers. The results could not validate the TPB framework which emphasizes the importance of perceived behavioral control for intention and actual behavior and findings are much more in line with the Theory of Reasoned Action. Normative inclinations as well as perception of risk are found to be important for intention as well as actual water conservation behavior. Additionally, the importance and linkages of the dimensions are found to be different between sub-groups of farmers, especially between traditional water management farmers and those who already using advanced water management strategies. This raises the question if one-fits-all behavioral models are adequate for practical studies where sub-groups may very much differ in their actions. Still, our study suggests that in the context of water conservation, normative inclination is a key dimension and it may be useful to consider the role of positive, self-rewarding feelings for farmers when setting up policy measures in the region.

Catastrophe risk models for evaluating disaster risk reduction investments in developing countries.

Major natural disasters in recent years have had high human and economic costs, and triggered record high postdisaster relief from governments and international donors. Given the current economic situation worldwide, selecting the most effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures is critical. This is especially the case for low- and middle-income countries, which have suffered disproportionally more economic and human losses from disasters. This article discusses a methodology that makes use of advanced probabilistic catastrophe models to estimate benefits of DRR measures. We apply such newly developed models to generate estimates for hurricane risk on residential structures on the island of St. Lucia, and earthquake risk on residential structures in Istanbul, Turkey, as two illustrative case studies. The costs and economic benefits for selected risk reduction measures are estimated taking account of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. We conclude by emphasizing the advantages and challenges of catastrophe model-based cost-benefit analyses for DRR in developing countries.

Probabilistic cost-benefit analysis of disaster risk management in a development context

Limited studies have shown that disaster risk management (DRM) can be cost-efficient in a development context. Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) is an evaluation tool to analyse economic efficiency. This research introduces quantitative, stochastic CBA frameworks and applies them in case studies of flood and drought risk reduction in India and Pakistan, while also incorporating projected climate change impacts. DRM interventions are shown to be economically efficient, with integrated approaches more cost-effective and robust than singular interventions. The paper highlights that CBA can be a useful tool if certain issues are considered properly, including: complexities in estimating risk; data dependency of results; negative effects of interventions; and distributional aspects. The design and process of CBA must take into account specific objectives, available information, resources, and the perceptions and needs of stakeholders as transparently as possible. Intervention design and uncertainties should be qualified through dialogue, indicating that process is as important as numerical results.

Vulnerability to Weather Disasters: The Choice of Coping Strategies in Rural Uganda

When a natural disaster hits, the affected households try to cope with its impacts. A variety of coping strategies, from reducing current consumption to disposing of productive assets, may be employed. The latter strategies are especially worrisome because they may reduce the capacity of the household to generate income in the future, possibly leading to chronic poverty. We used the results of a household survey in rural Uganda to ask, first, what coping strategies would tend to be employed in the event of a weather disaster, second, given that multiple strategies can be chosen, in what combinations would they tend to be employed, and, third, given that asset-liquidation strategies can be particularly harmful for the future income prospects of households, what determines their uptake? Our survey is one of the largest of its kind, containing over 3000 observations garnered by local workers using smartphone technology. We found that in this rural sample, by far, the most frequently reported choice would be to sell livestock. This is rather striking because asset-based theories would predict more reliance on strategies like eating and spending less today, which avoid disposal of productive assets. It may well be that livestock is held as a form of liquid savings to, among other things, help bounce back from a weather disaster. Although, we did find that other strategies that might undermine future prospects were avoided, notably selling land or the home and disrupting the childrens education. Our econometric analysis revealed a fairly rich set of determinants of different subsets of coping strategies. Perhaps most notably, households with a more educated head are much less likely to choose coping strategies involving taking their own children out of education.

Financial instruments for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation

The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has called for a new balance between reducing the risks from climate extremes and transferring them (for example, through insurance) as means for effectively preparing for and managing disaster impacts in a changing climate. This paper elaborates on this balance with an overview of disaster risk financing mechanisms and how they contribute to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in developing countries. We suggest a risk management approach that targets risk reduction and risk financing to different layers of risk, including a layer that represents a possible limit to adaptation. By reviewing traditional post-disaster financial arrangements, such as government compensation, and non-traditional pre-disaster instruments, such as index-based insurance, we show how risk financing can complement and stimulate risk reduction. We discuss the benefits of financial instruments, including the provision of post-disaster finances for recovery and pre-disaster security necessary for climate adaptation and poverty reduction. These benefits come at a cost, and we discuss the risks, challenges, and future prospects of risk financing in developing countries.

Water management from tradition to second modernity: An analysis of the water crisis in Iran

This article reflects on the fundamentals of first and second modernity and its usefulness and practicability for problem formulation and solving in the context of water management practices in Iran. It is argued that the current water crisis in Iran resulted from modernization based on first modernity paradigms, and second modernity concepts are used to present a framework for new water management approaches. Based on the concept of sub-political arrangements, we suggest that water management issues can be treated best in process-based ways under a reflexive modernity point of view.

Assessing water resource system vulnerability to unprecedented hydrological drought using copulas to characterize drought duration and deficit.

Abstract Global climate models suggest an increase in evapotranspiration, changing storm tracks, and moisture delivery in many parts of the world, which are likely to cause more prolonged and severe drought, yet the weakness of climate models in modeling persistence of hydroclimatic variables and the uncertainties associated with regional climate projections mean that impact assessments based on climate model output may underestimate the risk of multiyear droughts. In this paper, we propose a vulnerability‐based approach to test water resource system response to drought. We generate a large number of synthetic streamflow series with different drought durations and deficits and use them as input to a water resource system model. Marginal distributions of the streamflow for each month are generated by bootstrapping the historical data, while the joint probability distributions of consecutive months are constructed using a copula‐based method. Droughts with longer durations and larger deficits than the observed record are generated by perturbing the copula parameter and by adopting an importance sampling strategy for low flows. In this way, potential climate‐induced changes in monthly hydrological persistence are factored into the vulnerability analysis. The method is applied to the London water system (England) to investigate under which drought conditions severe water use restrictions would need to be imposed. Results indicate that the water system is vulnerable to drought conditions outside the range of historical events. The vulnerability assessment results were coupled with climate model information to compare alternative water management options with respect to their vulnerability to increasingly long and severe drought.

Technologies to Support Community Flood Disaster Risk Reduction

Abstract Floods affect more people globally than any other type of natural hazard. Great potential exists for new technologies to support flood disaster risk reduction. In addition to existing expert-based data collection and analysis, direct input from communities and citizens across the globe may also be used to monitor, validate, and reduce flood risk. New technologies have already been proven to effectively aid in humanitarian response and recovery. However, while ex-ante technologies are increasingly utilized to collect information on exposure, efforts directed towards assessing and monitoring hazards and vulnerability remain limited. Hazard model validation and social vulnerability assessment deserve particular attention. New technologies offer great potential for engaging people and facilitating the coproduction of knowledge.

Structured Coupling of Probability Loss Distributions: Assessing Joint Flood Risk in Multiple River Basins

Losses due to natural hazard events can be extraordinarily high and difficult to cope with. Therefore, there is considerable interest to estimate the potential impact of current and future extreme events at all scales in as much detail as possible. As hazards typically spread over wider areas, risk assessment must take into account interrelations between regions. Neglecting such interdependencies can lead to a severe underestimation of potential losses, especially for extreme events. This underestimation of extreme risk can lead to the failure of riskmanagement strategies when they are most needed, namely, in times of unprecedented events. In this article, we suggest a methodology to incorporate such interdependencies in risk via the use of copulas. We demonstrate that by coupling losses, dependencies can be incorporated in risk analysis, avoiding the underestimation of risk. Based on maximum discharge data of river basins and stream networks, we present and discuss different ways to couple loss distributions of basins while explicitly incorporating tail dependencies. We distinguish between coupling methods that require river structure data for the analysis and those that do not. For the later approach we propose a minimax algorithm to choose coupled basin pairs so that the underestimation of risk is avoided and the use of river structure data is not needed. The proposed methodology is especially useful for large-scale analysis and we motivate and apply our method using the case of Romania. The approach can be easily extended to other countries and natural hazards.

A risk management tool for tackling country-wide contingent disasters

Governments are key players in managing disaster risks, and fiscal risk management has become an integral part of disaster risk management. However, the ability of governments to implement disaster risk management strategies differs significantly across countries, depending on their capacity and resource constraints. The CatSim model and its most recent version presented in this paper helps to fill part of the information gap regarding the capacity and resources of a government to deal with natural disaster risk. We provide an in-depth example how the model works for the case of managing cyclone risk in Madagascar. In doing so, we provide recommendations as to how some of the more difficult concepts from the disaster risk theory and modelling field can be most easily understood by non-technically trained stakeholders. Such understanding is beneficial in facilitating consensus-building among various risk bearers from different sectors regarding options for managing risk. Only publicly available model for natural disaster risk management on the country level.Used and extended based on high-level workshops in more than 22 countries.In-depth example of cyclone risk in Madagascar given.