In the Bailong River corridor, Gansu, China, an estimated 1.7 million people are
threatened by geohazards including earthquakes, landslides and debris flows, flooding
and extreme rainfall. The area is also undergoing rapid economic growth and
infrastructure development. This paper reports on recent work exploring the physical
and social systems and their interactions, and highlights the need for further multidisciplinary research required to better understand human-landscape interactions in
such dynamic environments. Knowledge of geohazard processes (including responses
to rainfall, mapping of susceptibility, monitoring and triggering conditions for disaster
events) and their interactions with society is advancing, but there is still much further
work required to better understand how people living with risk perceive and adapt to
their environment. Perceptions of risk are contextual, and influenced by culture and
worldview; while society and culture may also be shaped by hazards, for example in
the local knowledge and coping mechanisms which reduce risk. There is a need to
answer questions such as how perceptions compare with scientifically-derived
conclusions about hazard and risk? And can they inform policy that will reduce disaster
risk?
History
School
Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering
Published in
International Conference on Silk Road Disaster Risk reduction and Sustainable Development
Citation
GOODALL, S. ... et al., 2019. Cultural perceptions of hazard and risk in a dynamic environment. Presented at the International Conference on Silk Road Disaster Risk reduction and Sustainable Development, Beijing, China, May 11-12th.
Version
AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/