Advancing Risk and Vulnerability Assessment for Decision-Making and Research

Case Study from the German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS) Project

by Niklas Baumert
Doctoral thesis
Date of Examination:2015-10-30
Date of issue:2016-04-04
Advisor:Prof. Dr. Heiko Faust
Referee:Prof. Dr. Heiko Faust
Referee:Prof. Dr. Jörn Birkmann
Persistent Address: http://dx.doi.org/10.53846/goediss-5569

 

 

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Abstract

English

Making use of risk and, in particular, of vulnerability assessment, offers a wide range of opportunities to identify and enhance the differential steps of risk management decision-making. However, the benefits of these assessments have not yet attracted the focus of contemporary risk and vulnerability research scholars. This dissertation charts a course for advancing applied risk and vulnerability assessment with the aim to increase its applicability and utility for processes of risk and vulnerability reduction. In support of this, a new Framework for Applied Risk and Vulnerability Assessment and Research (FARVAR) was developed that has spawned a risk and vulnerability causality frame and terminology shared and used as a common frame for action by risk and vulnerability scholars and practitioners. It stresses the need for more applied risk and vulnerability assessment and research with a focus on how to systemically integrate societal configurations into risk reduction considerations t influencing risk reduction outcomes. It also emphasises how such information can support risk management decisions. This challenge has been addressed by defining an iterative risk management process, where for each of the discrete but evolutionary risk management steps disaggregated, need-based and tailored risk and vulnerability information can provide decision support. To empirically explore areas of application, a case study has contextualized the FARVAR and the risk management process derived thereof in order to set up a Tsunami Early Warning System in Indonesia. This contextualization has brought to light a variety of diverse application opportunities that provides decision support along the process of generating, assessing, selecting, implementing, and monitoring risk and vulnerability management options. For example, these applications have proven to be beneficial for each step, and therein, notably, for prioritizing and sequencing risk and vulnerability reduction options; the comparative cost-benefit and effectiveness analyses; the identification of spatial areas of intervention and spatial planning; the development of context specific awareness campaigns and education curricula; the rationalization of conflicting public and expert debates related to specific risk management challenges; and also for broadening the perspective of risk and vulnerability assessments from mere technical to social fields of action.
Keywords: vulnerability; decision making; early warning systems; evacuation readiness; evacuation capacity; applied research; German-Indonesian Tsunami Early Warning System (GITEWS); vulnerability reduction
 
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