Hazard type and risk communication

Question 1

Psychological approach to risk communication

Answer 1

• Focus on the individual
• Draws on traditional ‘scientific method’
• Quantitative methods
• Objectification

Question 2

Intervention strategies

Answer 2

The model proposed has implications for conceptualising and implementing risk reduction strategies. The model implies that they should mirror the developmental process described here: motivating people to prepare, facilitating the formation of intentions, and then promoting conversion of intentions to preparedness (Patron, 2013)

Question 3

Problems with conventional approaches (psychological) -

Answer 3

• ‘Constructed’ science;
• politics and science → placing science into a wider social context, not dismissing science
• de-constructing rationality and expertisation

Question 4

Socio-cultural approaches

Answer 4

• Focus on social and cultural construction of issues
• Subjectivity accepted
• Qualitatively assessed.

Question 5

Challenging the objectiveness of science

Answer 5

“This somewhat heterogenous body of work has challenged the self-image of science as an epistemologically objective and value-free study of the self evident facts of a real and ontologically objective world” (Demerrit, 2001)

Question 6

Assumptions made by the scientific community

Answer 6

“Many of these assumptions are informal and negotiated by relatively small communities of investigators. Others are not formally acknowleged because they emerge out of the interactions of scientists within a wider epistemic community of research scientists and policy makers” (Demeritt, 2001a)

Question 7

Nudge Approach

Answer 7

“using the new sciences of choice from psychology, economics and neurosciences – as well as appealing to an improved understanding of decision making and behavior change – a libertatian paternalist mode of governing is being promoted in the UK (2011)

Question 8

‘deficit’ approaches

Answer 8

Owens (2000) characterizes ‘deficit’ approaches thus “lay people are ignorant of environmental science and irrational in their response to risks: the public must be engaged in order to be better informed and converted to a ‘more objective’ view”

Question 9

New agendas in the social sciences emerging from STS (Whatmore, 2009)

Answer 9

• Tackling epistemic hegemony
• Exploring and challenging knowledge hierarchies
• Challenging conventional scientific methods
• Understanding publics

Question 10

Whatmore, 2009 - public science as a public good

Answer 10

“…the answer to the question of what makes public science a more effective public good resides not in its subservience to governmental or commercial agendas…This places the onus on diversifying the publics with whom scientists collaborate on matters that concern them, and on the terms on which they do so. It should also…involve redistributions of environmental expertise in which the inventiveness of social scientists comes to the fore in the design and conduct of research practices that stage more and different opportunities for new knowledge politics to emerge” (Whatmore, 2009)

Question 11

Demeritt (2001) - describes the scientific construction of climate change as

Answer 11

a global scale environmental problem, whose reductionist formulation serves a variety of political purposes but instrumental and instrumental and interest based critiques of the use of scientific knowledge tend to ignore the ways which politics gets into science at the upstream end

Question 12

Demeritt (2001) - science link with politics

Answer 12

Science has been imagied as indpendent of the political parties and feeding information into it.

Question 13

Demeritt (2001) - cultural politics of science

Answer 13

Very little attention has been paid to the cultural politics of scientific practice and its consequential role in framing and constructing for us the problem of global warming.

Question 14

Demeritt (2001) - right wing critics have tried

Answer 14

to refute scientific knowledge of global warming as socially constructed and publically based balderdash

Question 15

Beck (1992)

Answer 15

The dependence upon science to make tangible otherwise invisible environmental risks is characteristic of a modern risk society.

Question 16

Owens (2000) - rationales for public engagement fall into

Answer 16

rationalist, ‘information deficit’ model, and those owing to a more civi, or deliberative, ideal.

Question 17

Owens (2000) - Information deficit

Answer 17

lay people are ignorant of environmental science and irrational in their response to risks - the public must be engaged in order to be better informed

Question 18

Jaeger et al (1993)

Answer 18

study in Switzerland which found hat cultural roles and social networks had a greater influence on translating underlying environmental concerns than the availability of scientific information

Question 19

Coastal flooding: an international problem

Answer 19

McGranahan et al (2007)

• Low elevation coastal zone
• Increasing urbanization – delta regions
• Mitigation versus migration
• Sea Level rise
• High tides, storm surges, geomorphological hazards
• Resource and risk

Question 20

Coastal flooding in the UK - Pirazzoli et al (2005) - study involved

Answer 20

Statistical analysis of hourly tide measurements for some 285 equivalent full years from Weymouth, Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Sheerness, Cherbourg and more. For each wave, surge heights have been determined and correlated with hourly or three hourly wind and air pressure data

Question 21

Coastal flooding in the UK - Pirazzoli et al (2005) - study found

Answer 21

Recent medium term climate evolution does not seem to be increasing the flood risk. However, the long term risk of flooding will increase through the loss in land elevation due to a continuation of local relative sea level rise.

Question 22

Coastal flooding in the UK - Ball et al (2014) investigated

Answer 22

Contributing factors to flood hazard around Scotland - there is a need to develop preliminary assessments of areas particularly vulnerable to flooding for compliance with EU directive on the assessment and management of flood risks

Question 23

Coastal flooding in the UK - Ball et al (2014) - methodology

Answer 23

Combining data sources, with GIS analysis of the spatial distribution of key meteorological variables, sheds light on the risk of flooding from combinations of surge and wave action. Exposure to wave energy was computed from prevailing wind strength and duration at 36 stations

Question 24

Coastal flooding in the UK - Ball et al (2014) - Found that

Answer 24

The highest wave exposure was at open coast locations exposed to the Atlantic fetch but GIS showed other areas close to estuaries that also had high exposure.

Question 25

Seeing is believing

Answer 25

Guardian articles showing that campers dice with death pitching tent under Jurassic coast cliff despite signs warning them as heavy rainfall made the cliffs in an unusually unstable condition.

Question 26

Living with long term risk

Answer 26

• Climate change and coastal flooding/cliff erosion
• Comprehensive analysis of likely changes in flood risk
• “By quantifying the impacts of these changes in terms of the common currency of risk, better information is available to decision-makers and the management policies concerning different hazards and involving multiple stakeholders can be more effectively communicated”

Question 27

Presenting personalised coastal flood risk information to the public

Answer 27

• Science communication (4 factors)
  o 1 – Identifying relevant science
  o 2 – Determining people’s informational needs
  o 3 – Designing communication to fill those needs
  o 4 – Evaluating the adequacy of those communications
  Wong-Parodi and Strauss (2014)

Question 28

Community driven coastal management, South Uist

Answer 28

“Coastal science and advice on the best management policy was presented to the community at several meetings. Despite this, the local community was unwilling to accept any loss of land at Kilpheder, and their views were the key factor in deciding to build an artificial crushed rock and sand bund along the existing headland. Although the land users are now fully aware that shoreline change is inevitable, there is a desire to delay any further loss of land, rather than adapt to it. The lack of assistance provided to crofters in the immediate aftermath of the storm may have contributed to this view”

Young et al (2014)

Question 29

Coastal flooding: the Exe Estuary - living with a changing coast

Answer 29

• Authorities responsible for management
• Publics and perception of risk
• Dynamic coastline – changing risks to estuary communities
• The importance of Dawlish Warren
• Local involvement in planning and decision making
• Model of ‘communication’

Question 30

Jurassic Coast Pathfinder project details

Answer 30

DEFRA launched the £11 million scheme in 2009 involving local authorities to bid for a portion of the money to improve public engagement in the process of planning to adapt to coastal change. 15 successful bids.

Question 31

Jurassic coast pathfinder project 7 aims

Answer 31

1 - Knowledgable coastal communities
2 - costal communities able to debate about climate change
3 - coastal communities who are able to actively and meaningfully be a part of the decision making process
4 - coastal communities who are well prepared and equipped
5 - coastal communities who are supported in the testing and acceptance of practical action to climate change
6 - future generations of coastal communities who are aware of the coastal challenges
7 - A spatial planning system which is well equipped to reconcile the potential conflicts between a sustainable approach to coastal change and onshore/offshore development