The Urban Systems Abstraction Hierarchy : a resilience tool to capture cascading flood exposure

Floods are increasing in both frequency and intensity under climate change. Research has shown that people who are socially vulnerable are more exposed to flood risk. Worse is that flood disadvantage that exists today is projected to continue in the future: it is stubborn. Current approaches are not working sufficiently well to unblock this stubborn disadvantage. Something new is required. A fresh perspective to flood exposure is offered in this thesis. Flood exposure is nested within the wider urban environment through the development of a systems tool – the Urban Systems Abstraction Hierarchy – to quantify how tangible flood exposure cascades through complex system interactions to impact longer-term resilient outcomes. Resilience concepts are applied to navigate the tool and interpret its quantitative results. The thesis provides a theoretical contribution to understanding how flood resilience concepts are currently perceived and applied within flood risk management. It provides a methodological contribution to capture these new resilience insights in a tool. It provides a practical contribution by identifying the interactions which can help cities withstand, absorb or adapt to flood exposure, enabling transformative resilience strategies.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding

Building community resilience in a context of climate change : The role of social capital

Acknowledgements This research was funded by the UK Research and INNOVATION Economic and Social Research Council award number ES/J500136/1.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Resilience in complex catchment systems

In this paper, we explore how we can use catchment resilience as a unifying concept to manage and regulate catchments, using structured reviews to support our perspective. Catchments are complex systems with interrelated natural, social, and technical aspects. The exposure, vulnerability, and resilience of these aspects (separately and in combination) are the latent conditions, which, when triggered by a hydrohazard, result in catchment impacts. In complex catchment systems, resilience is the ability to bounce back, the ability to absorb, and the ability to transform. When all three abilities are accounted for, we are forced to consider the interactions of the catchment system. Six main complexity concepts can be used to frame how we approach evaluating catchment resilience. These concepts are: natural-social-technical aspects, interactions, spatial scales, time scales, multiple forms of evidence, and uncertainty. In analysing these complexity concepts, we have found that there are several gaps in current practice. Requirements for future methodological approaches are suggested. Central to any effective approach is the incorporation of a linking systems or interaction analysis, which draws together the natural-social-technical system in a meaningful way. If our approaches do not begin to acknowledge the interdependencies and interactions, we may miss substantial opportunities to enhance catchment resilience