Tim Prior

Measuring resilience: methodological and political challenges of a trend security concept

Modern societies are characterised by global connectedness and complexity. At the same time society, and the various infrastructures that connect and define it, are understood to be increasingly threatened by unpredictable and uncertain (or unknown) global risks. With this, the conceptualisation and development of resilience has become a dominant, yet enigmatic preoccupation: dominant because it is seen as a fundamental component of devolved proactive approaches to mitigating complex threats whatever their nature; and enigmatic because its practical application is as diverse as its definitions. Today, however, a significant challenge still lies in the accurate characterisation and quantification of resilience, and thus also the ability to provide a systematic basis for policy-making in resilience-based threat mitigation. This article examines the methodological challenges of operationalising resilience. It draws on several cases that detail ways of measuring resilience, reflecting on the development, benefits and limitations of these and highlighting important considerations pertinent in the construction of resilience indices. Doing so, however, the article also maintains that resilience should not be reduced to a methodological problem only, given that the methodological operationalisation of resilience also connects with analytical ideas of what and whose kind of responsibility should be measured and political conceptions of who assumes what tasks and responsibility in a resilience framework.

An ecosystem services framework to support statutory water allocation planning in Australia

ABSTRACT During the past decade the concept of ecosystem services (ES) – the benefits that nature provides to humans – has increasingly been embraced as a promising avenue towards sustainable resource management. Initially pitched to incentive-based biodiversity conservation, the ES concept is now being applied to a diversity of environmental resources in a multitude of policy, planning and management contexts. In the context of water planning, the ES concept is increasingly rivalling the Integrated Water Resource Management paradigm. Despite the omnipresence of the ES language, significant challenges remain in terms of ES implementation and governance. This paper reports on lessons learnt from the collaborative development of an ES Framework within the context of statutory water allocation planning in Australia. The Framework consists of seven components, three of which match key planning steps in existing Australian statutory water planning guidelines. Central to the Framework is a benefits table for water planning. The benefits table is based on the ‘ES cascade’ model, a metaphor which makes clear distinctions between ecosystem processes, functions, services, benefits, values and beneficiaries. The benefits table is intended for bidirectional use, confronting demands of water system beneficiaries with the biophysical mechanisms that render the services. The Framework is innovative in three ways. First, it was jointly designed with Australias national water agency (the National Water Commission), based on statutory guidelines for water planning and management. Second, it addresses a statutory requirement for water planning processes to better consider public benefits from aquatic systems, thus providing a direct incentive for water planners to engage with the Framework. Third, the Framework emphasizes the need for comprehensive, a-priori analysis of ES beneficiaries. Comprehensive evaluation of the ES Framework will be required to document successful applications and share lessons learnt amongst the water planning and ES research communities.

Disaster, Resilience and Security in Global Cities

Today the majority of the globe’s inhabitants live in urban areas, and according to all prognoses, cities will continue to grow in the coming decades. Global cities are also becoming increasingly connected as a result of economic, political, cultural and demographic globalization. In the context of urban security management, the growing complexity these connections bring may present a doubleedged sword: global cities can be both the most secure and the most dangerous places to be when disaster strikes. Developing appropriate mechanisms to prepare for and cope with complex crises in cities will, in the future, be a key aspect of security policy-making. In this article we explore current trends in research and practice concerning the management of disasters in eight global cities, particularly focusing on aspects of preparedness, response, urban resilience and cooperation. The results of the study indicate that cities must improve the capacity to predict new or unforeseen risk by diversifying capabilities for risk assessment and improving inter-agency collaborations. In addition, cities must adopt new approaches to disaster management that are sufficiently flexible to adapt to a changing risk environment and to safeguard urban security. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol6/iss2/5

Transformations in European Natural Hazard Management: There and Back Again

Today, technical natural hazard management represents the central mode of governance for coping with natural and man-made hazards in many parts of the world. In most European states, it is primarily organized through specialized agencies at the national or sub-national level, which analyse and assess risks to society, organize preventive and responsive measures and inform the public. In recent years, however, this mode of security governance has been increasingly challenged by new approaches to handling hazards that emphasize decentralized, self-organizing structures for flexible responses to challenges posed by complexity and unpredictability (see also Hollis in this volume). Resilience is an oft-used concept (and sometimes buzzword) arguably lying at the centre of this transformation in civil security that seems to cherry-pick elements of natural hazard management’s long and varied history. This transformation has been triggered by several obvious failures and shortcomings of technical natural hazard management, in particular to effectively prevent or mitigate major large-scale, cascading disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011 (which resulted in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant meltdown).

Preventing and Managing Large-Scale Disasters in Swiss Cities

While risk managers at the city level have generally been found to favor a stronger involvement by, and engagement with, the federal government in the predisaster phase, the clash of ‘cultures’ between the operationally-oriented city risk managers and the more strategically-oriented federal agencies needs to be acknowledged and addressed. The federal concepts are “...useful, but very general. [...] What we needed is a much more operational basis for planning, much more focused on the ground. [...] It is important that the Table 2: Stated events and processes influencing city-level risk analysis. Preventing and Managing Large-Scale Disasters in Swiss Cities 10 Confederation understands this...”12 A possible reason for this clash, mentioned by the interviewees, is that cities are only rarely actively involved in the risk identification and analysis process of higher political levels. Following the interviewees’ perspective, by developing concepts and scenarios for risks that are directly relevant in the specific city context, the federal government could make sure that the most important, and newly emerging risks, are acknowledged by all lower political levels and risk managers. Another (or rather a complementary) channel that we found to be used to introduce topics discussed at higher political levels into city risk managers’ agendas is through common exercises. Preparedness for power blackouts and pandemics have been tested in major, nationwide exercises, which (further) sensitized city risk managers to the challenges associated with managing these hazards. The security network exercise conducted in 2014 (SVU 14) was referred to as a positive example13. Training opportunities offered by the federal administration to people responsible for local disaster management is another tool through which knowledge and a common understanding of hazards is distributed and shared in Switzerland’s federalist civil protection system. 4.2 The risk landscape What are the hazards and risks Swiss cities focus on in their current practices? What do city risk managers regard as the most concerning scenarios? According to the respondents, daily business is mostly preoccupied dealing with regular events on small-to-medium scales. They include seasonal floods, fires, and regular crime. The challenge of risk managers at the city level is that they need to be familiar with, and cover the whole range of hazards, i.e. from minor to major events. Some respondents saw a trend in risk analysis leading away from risks that are primarily dealt with by the police or fire service to “...everything that moves people and scares them...”