Geographical risk research

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The geographical risk research analyzed the effects of anticipated hazards at the interface between society and the environment . It can therefore be assigned to the interdisciplinary area of geography , which deals with human-environment relationships. The concept of risk expresses the research approach that hazards cannot be viewed in isolation from social processes. It thus stands for an attempt at an integrated consideration of external threats on the one hand and social vulnerability (" vulnerability ") or resilience (" resilience ") on the other hand, which also takes into account the socially determined enabling and creation of danger.

The research pursues two different objectives: Part of geographic risk research is about determining objective risk factors in the interaction between humans and the environment. Another part examines, based on the constructivist social sciences, which social effects are associated with the ascription of “risk”. Specific features of geographic risk research are the focus on spatialization of risks and the high interdisciplinary and integral claim as a mediator between different risk concepts.

Research subject

The term “ risk ” as a central subject of a sub-discipline of geography was only used increasingly in English-language publications from the beginning of the 1990s, and even later in German-speaking countries. In this way, “risk” competed with the research subject “hazard” that had been emerging decades earlier. This shift reflects the public discussion initiated by Ulrich Beck about the “ risk society ”.

According to hazard research, “hazard” is understood to mean an interaction between the system “environment” and the system “people / society”, which affects the subjectively perceived disadvantage of the social system and in which both systems can be influenced by people. The term encompasses both the state of a hazard and the probability with which an event causing damage will occur. It is thus already much more comprehensive than that of the catastrophe , but shares with it the uncertainty regarding the exact relationship between the two systems. Only the vulnerability of a society to a hazard determines the probability and the amount of possible damage and turns the hazard into a risk.

The conception of vulnerability used in this schematic model as passive exposure (“ exposure model”) to a danger is used in the “ pressure and release model” by Piers Blaikie et al. and expanded in the “ Hazards of Place model” by Susan L. Cutter , in which vulnerability is viewed as a multi-stage development instead of a state. In this context, the “ livelihood approach” is also significant, the focus of which is on securing the livelihood of a society (and thus its ability to be resilient to threats).

In research practice, hazard and risk research is primarily concerned with dealing with abiotic natural disasters such as earthquakes , landslides and flood disasters . Suddenly occurring epidemics , technical disasters and the consequences of social conflicts ( wars , terrorism ) are increasingly moving into the focus of the subject. Keith Smith summarizes these hazards under the term environmental hazard .

Discipline history

International

Gilbert F. White is considered to be the founder of geographic hazard research . In his dissertation Human Adjustment to Floods , published in 1945 , he found that after the construction of dams on the Mississippi, the amount of damage caused by floods continued to rise, as areas previously designated as floodplains had been settled at the same time . In the following decades, hazard research developed into the most important discipline at the interface between physical geography and human geography, which during this period otherwise diverged in their research areas. Ian Burton , Robert W. Kates and White finally systematically presented their human - ecological approach in 1978 in The environment as hazard .

The underlying view that the damage that occurs in natural disasters is the result of incorrect adaptation of humans to nature was criticized as socio-politically naive and therefore insufficient in the 1980s at the latest. The political-ecological perspective, represented by u. a. Piers Blaikie , Harold Brookfield and Michael J. Watts , therefore, put the research focus on the further political and economic circumstances that contribute to the development of agricultural monocultures and, as a result, of famine during periods of drought . With a few exceptions, such as the works of Susan L. Cutter , questions of environmental justice and environmental racism , which result from the spatial segregation of population groups, remained largely unheeded.

In light of the generally growing awareness of natural disasters at the time, the United Nations declared the 1990s the Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction . In the following years, in addition to a new edition of The environment as hazard , numerous other important publications were published in which an attempt was made to take greater account of the complex geographic interdependence of man and the environment. In addition, cities moved more into the focus of geographic risk research.

German-speaking area

In the German-speaking area, where major natural disasters are rare, research into hazards and risks has shown comparatively little research interest. In human geography, the works of Robert Geipel and some other representatives of the human-ecological Munich School of Social Geography were for a long time an exception. Hans-Georg Bohle , who was also one of the main founders of the vulnerability approach internationally, brought perspectives from geographic development research to German-speaking risk research.

Research approaches

Objectivistic approach

The scientific-objectivist approach is mainly used in physical geography when dealing with risks. It is assumed that objective facts of nature are calculable and thus technically controllable. From this point of view, humans are only taken into account to the extent that the effect that has occurred on them is viewed as damage. Related risk research disciplines such as engineering and economic risk research v. a. the insurance industry. From a geographical point of view, the possibility of geographical location of risks within this approach is of particular importance.

Constructivist approach

The sociological- constructivist approach is used especially in human geography for risk research. The risk is researched as a phenomenon constructed by humans. The most important mechanisms of risk construction are the action, evaluation and perception of the actors. The perspective therefore assumes that people are more likely to take risks than to be exposed to them. It follows that the person is solely responsible for the existence of a risk. The main interest of this approach is therefore those involved in risk construction.

Integrated approaches

Despite the two opposing approaches, integrative research approaches are also sought within geographical risk research. This arises primarily from the conviction that the other two basic epistemological positions are complementary and that only through their integration is a holistic implementation of research knowledge possible. This is achieved, for example, by the fact that risks are considered to be socially constructed, but dangers are ascribed to nature.

Methods and application

The most specialized method of geographic risk research is the mapping of risks. A distinction is made between hazard, risk and vulnerability maps . Application examples for this method are Alpine risk management and spatial planning. Not only risk factors are taken into account, but also anthropogenic factors such as the susceptibility of the chosen land use.

Problems of geographic risk research

One problem is that the two different perspectives of risk research often cannot be combined and there is therefore a lack of integrated perspectives. Another problem is the fact that new findings contribute to a changed perception of risks and thus lead to a societal self-reinforcement of risk thinking.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Egner and Pott (2010), p. 15; Weichhart (2007), p. 201
  2. ↑ Beck (1986); Pohl (1998)
  3. ↑ Geipel (1992), p. 3
  4. ↑ Pohl and Geipel (2002), p. 5
  5. ↑ cf. for example the model by Mitchell et al. (1989), p. 404, in German translation in Geipel (1992), p. 7 and Pohl (2008), p. 56
  6. ↑ Blaikie et al. (1994), p. 23
  7. ↑ Cutter (1996), pp. 535-537
  8. ↑ Bohle (2001); see. also Blaikie et al. (1994), p. 50
  9. ^ Smith (2001), p. 15
  10. ↑ Pohl (2008), pp. 48-50
  11. ↑ White (1945)
  12. ↑ Kates (1971)
  13. ↑ Burton et al. (1978)
  14. ↑ Watts (1983)
  15. ↑ Pulido (2002), p. 44
  16. ↑ Smith (2001 [1991]); Blaikie et al. (1994); Kasperson et al. (1995); Hewitt (1997)
  17. ↑ Mitchell (1999), Pelling (2003)
  18. ↑ v. a. Geipel (1977)
  19. ↑ Pohl (2008), p. 56
  20. ^ Pohl and Geipel (2002)

swell

  • Ulrich Beck : Risk society: on the way to a different modern age . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt / Main 1986, ISBN 3-518-11365-8 .
  • Piers Blaikie, Terry Cannon, Ian Davis, and Ben Wisner: At Risk: Natural Hazards, People's Vulnerability, and Disasters . Routledge, London a. a. 1994, ISBN 0-415-08477-6 .
  • Hans-Georg Bohle : New Approaches to Geographic Risk Research: An Analysis Framework to Determine Sustainable Life Security for Poverty Groups . In: The Earth . tape 132 , no. 2 , 2001, p. 119-140 .
  • Ian Burton, Robert W. Kates, and Gilbert F. White: The environment as hazard . Oxford Univ. Press, New York 1978, ISBN 0-19-502221-1 .
  • Susan L. Cutter: Vulnerability to environmental hazards . In: Progress in Human Geography . tape 20 , no. 4 , 1996, pp. 529-539 .
  • Heike Egner and Andreas Pott: Risk and Space . In: Heike Egner and Andreas Pott (eds.): Geographical Risk Research: For the construction of spatialized risks and security (=  geographic knowledge ). tape 147 . Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-515-09427-6 , pp. 9-31 .
  • Robert Geipel : Friuli: Socio-geographic aspects of an earthquake catastrophe (=  Munich geographic books . Volume 40 ). Lassleben, Kallmünz / Regensburg 1977, ISBN 3-7847-6040-6 .
  • Robert Geipel: Natural Risks: Disaster Management in the Social Environment . Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt 1992, ISBN 3-534-11170-2 .
  • Kenneth Hewitt: Regions of Risk: A Geographical Introduction to Disasters . Longman, Harlow 1997, ISBN 0-582-21005-4 .
  • Jeanne X. Kasperson, Roger E. Kasperson and Billie Lee Turner II .: Regions at Risk: Comparisons of Threatened Environments . United Nations Univ. Press, Tokyo / New York 1995, ISBN 92-808-0848-6 .
  • Robert W. Kates: Natural Hazard in Human Ecological Perspective: Hypotheses and Models . In: Economic Geography . tape 47 , no. 3 , 1971, p. 438-451 .
  • James K. Mitchell (Ed.): Crucibles of Hazard: Mega-Cities and Disasters in Transition . United Nations Univ. Press, Tokyo / New York 1999, ISBN 92-808-0987-3 .
  • James K. Mitchell, Neal Devine, and Kathleen Jagger: A Contextual Model of Natural Hazard . In: Geographical Review . tape 79 , no. 4 , 1989, pp. 391-409 .
  • Mark Pelling: The Vulnerability of Cities: Natural Disasters and Social Resilience . Earthscan Publications, Harlow 2003, ISBN 1-85383-829-2 .
  • Jürgen Pohl : The perception of natural risks in the “risk society” . In: Günter Heinritz, Reinhard Wießner and Matthias Winiger (eds.): Sustainability as a model for environmental and spatial development in Europe (Deutscher Geographentag 1997, Bonn) . F. Steiner, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-515-07186-5 , pp. 153-163 .
  • Jürgen Pohl: The emergence of geographic hazard research . In: Carsten Felgentreff and Thomas Glade (eds.): Natural risks and social disasters . Spectrum, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8274-1571-4 , p. 47-62 .
  • Jürgen Pohl and Robert Geipel: Natural Hazards and Natural Risks . In: Geographical Rundschau . tape 54 , no. 1 , 2002, p. 4-8 .
  • Laura Pulido: Reflections on a White Discipline . In: The Professional Geographer . tape 54 , no. 1 , 2002, p. 42-49 , doi : 10.1111 / 0033-0124.00313 .
  • Keith Smith: Environmental Hazards: Assessing Risk and Reducing Disaster . 3. Edition. Routledge, London a. a. 2001, ISBN 0-415-22464-0 (1st edition 1991).
  • Michael J. Watts: On the Poverty of Theory: Natural Hazards Research in Context . In: Kenneth Hewitt (Ed.): Interpretations of Calamity from the Viewpoint of Human Ecology (=  The Risks & Hazards Series ). tape 1 . Allen & Unwin, Winchester 1983, ISBN 0-04-301160-8 , pp. 231-262 .
  • Peter Weichhart : Risk - Suggestions for dealing with a colorful term . In: Reports on German regional studies . tape 81 , no. 3 , 2007, p. 201-214 .
  • Gilbert F. White: Human Adjustment to Floods: A Geographical Approach to the Flood Problem in the United States (=  Geography Research Paper . Volume 29 ). Univ. Press, Chicago 1945.

further reading

  • Hans-Georg Bohle : Geographies of Vulnerability . In: Geographical Rundschau . tape 59 , no. 10 , 2007, p. 20-25 .
  • Richard Dikau and Juergen Weichselgartner: The restless planet: Man and the forces of nature . Knowledge Buchges., Darmstadt 2005, ISBN 3-534-17245-0 .
  • Heike Egner and Andreas Pott (eds.): Geographical risk research: For the construction of spatialized risks and security (=  geographic knowledge . Volume 147 ). Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-515-09427-6 .
  • Carsten Felgentreff and Thomas Glade (eds.): Natural risks and social disasters . Spectrum, Heidelberg 2008, ISBN 978-3-8274-1571-4 .
  • Elmar Kulke and Herbert Popp (Eds.): Dealing with Risks: Disasters - Destabilization - Security (German Geographers' Day 2007, Bayreuth) . German Society for Geography, Bayreuth a. a. 2008, ISBN 978-3-9808754-3-1 .
  • Detlef Müller-Mahn : Perspectives of Geographical Risk Research . In: Geographical Rundschau . tape 59 , no. 10 , 2007, p. 4-11 .
  • Detlef Müller-Mahn (Ed.): The Spatial Dimension of Risk: How Geography Shapes the Emergence of Riskscapes (=  Earthscan risk in society series . Volume 27 ). Routledge, London / New York 2012, ISBN 978-1-84971-085-5 .
  • Juergen Weichselgartner: Natural hazards as a social construction: A geographical observation of the social confrontation with natural risks . Shaker Verlag, Aachen 2002, ISBN 3-8265-9860-1 (dissertation).

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