An Integrated Approach for Including Social Capacities, and Economic Valuation in Risk Assessment of Water Related Hazards in Uncertain Scenarios

We propose a conceptual framework, KR-FWK (i.e. KULTURisk Framework from the name of the European project within which it originated) and its implementation methods SERRA (Socio-Economic Regional Risk Assessment) for integrated (physical and economical) risk assessment, and economic valuation of risk prevention benefits on multiple receptors. The KR-FWK and the SERRA approach are characterised by: (i) integration of physical-environmental dimensions and the socio-economic ones in risk assessment; (ii) consideration of the role of social capacities (adaptive and coping capacity) in reducing risk and related costs, (iii) quantitative (even monetary) assessment of risks and of the benefits of risk reduction measures, and (iv) solutions to deal with multiple sources of uncertainty in view of including the change dimension in decision support. Building on a widely adopted conceptual model, Risk is here considered as the combination of Hazard, Vulnerability and Exposure. In turn, Vulnerability is the result of the interactions between physical characteristics (susceptibility) and the capacities of the socio-economic system to adapt and cope with a given natural hazard. Exposure quantifies the natural and anthropogenic assets, which may be subject to the hazard. Whenever possible and desirable, exposure can be assessed in monetary terms, and thus the multiplicative combination of two indices ranging between 0 and 1 (H and V) with a third one (E) expressed in monetary terms produces a monetary quantification of risk. KR-FWK and SERRA have been applied to a series of case studies to test and consolidate the approach in various contexts of data availability, scale, etc.