Imagining flood futures: risk assessment and management in practice

• Published in: Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A: Mathematical, physical, and engineering sciences Vol. 369; no. 1942; pp. 1784 - 1806
• Main Authors: Lane, Stuart N., Landström, Catharina, Whatmore, Sarah J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England The Royal Society Publishing 13.05.2011; The Royal Society
• Subjects: Baudrillard; Climate Change; Computer Simulation; Disaster Planning; Disasters - history; England; Financial risk; Flood control; Flooding; Floodplains; Floods; Floods - history; Forecasting; History, 20th Century; History, 21st Century; Humans; Modeling; Models, Theoretical; Public Policy; Rain; Risk Analysis; Risk Assessment; Risk Management; Simulacra; Simulation; Software; Wales; Watersheds; England; Wales; British Isles, England; British Isles, Wales
• ISSN: 1364-503X; 1471-2962
• DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0346

The mantra that policy and management should be 'evidence-based' is well established. Less so are the implications that follow from 'evidence' being predictions of the future (forecasts, scenarios, horizons) even though such futures define the actions taken today to make the future sustainable. Here, we consider the tension between 'evidence', reliable because it is observed, and predictions of the future, unobservable in conventional terms. For flood risk management in England and Wales, we show that futures are actively constituted, and so imagined, through 'suites of practices' entwining policy, management and scientific analysis. Management has to constrain analysis because of the many ways in which flood futures can be constructed, but also because of commitment to an accounting calculus, which requires risk to be expressed in monetary terms. It is grounded in numerical simulation, undertaken by scientific consultants who follow policy/management guidelines that define the futures to be considered. Historical evidence is needed to deal with process and parameter uncertainties and the futures imagined are tied to pasts experienced. Reliance on past events is a challenge for prediction, given changing probability (e.g. climate change) and consequence (e.g. development on floodplains). So, risk management allows some elements of risk analysis to become unstable (notably in relation to climate change) but forces others to remain stable (e.g. invoking regulation to prevent inappropriate floodplain development). We conclude that the assumed separation of risk assessment and management is false because the risk calculation has to be defined by management. Making this process accountable requires openness about the procedures that make flood risk analysis more (or less) reliable to those we entrust to produce and act upon them such that, unlike the 'pseudosciences', they can be put to the test of public interrogation by those who have to live with their consequences.