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1. Framing the Problem of Flood Risk and Flood Management in Metropolitan Los Angeles

   https://doi.org/10.1175/WCAS-D-22-0013.1  

   Ulibarri, Nicola ; Valencia-Uribe, Claudia ; Sanders, Brett F. ; Schubert, Jochen ; Matthew, Richard ; Forman, Fonna ; Allaire, Maura ; Brady, David ( January 2023 , Weather, Climate, and Society)

   This paper develops the concept of flood problem framing to understand decision-makers’ priorities in flood risk management in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region in California (LA Metro). Problem frames shape an individual’s preferences for particular management strategies and their future behaviors. While flooding is a complex, multifaceted problem, with multiple causes and multiple impacts, a decision-maker is most likely to manage only those dimensions of flooding about which they are aware or concerned. To evaluate flood decision-makers’ primary concerns related to flood exposure, vulnerability, and management in the LA Metro, we draw on focus groups with flood control districts, city planners, nonprofit organizations, and other flood-related decision-makers. We identify numerous concerns, including concerns about specific types of floods (e.g., fluvial vs pluvial) and impacts to diverse infrastructure and communities. Our analyses demonstrate that flood concerns aggregate into three problem frames: one concerned with large fluvial floods exacerbated by climate change and their housing, economic, and infrastructure impacts; one concerned with pluvial nuisance flooding, pollution, and historic underinvestment in communities; and one concerned with coastal and fluvial flooding’s ecosystem impacts. While each individual typically articulated concerns that overlapped with only one problem frame, each problem frame was discussed by numerousmore »organization types, suggesting low barriers to cross-organizational coordination in flood planning and response. This paper also advances our understanding of flood risk perception in a region that does not face frequent large floods.

   This paper investigates the primary concerns that planners, flood managers, and other decision-makers have about flooding in Southern California. This is important because the way that decision-makers understand flooding shapes the way that they will plan for and respond to flood events. We find that some decision-makers are primarily concerned with large floods affecting large swaths of infrastructure and housing; others are concerned with frequent, small floods that mobilize pollution in low-income areas; and others are concerned with protecting coastal ecosystems during sea level rise. Our results also highlight key priorities for research and practice, including the need for flexible and accessible flood data and education about how to evacuate.

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2. Learning and flexibility for water supply infrastructure planning under groundwater resource uncertainty

   https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab4664  

   Fletcher, Sarah ; Strzepek, Kenneth ; Alsaati, Adnan ; de Weck, Olivier ( November 2019 , Environmental Research Letters)

   Water supply infrastructure planning in groundwater-dependent regions is often challenged by uncertainty in future groundwater resource availability. Many major aquifer systems face long-term water table decline due to unsustainable withdrawals. However, many regions, especially those in the developing world, have a scarcity of groundwater data. This creates large uncertainties in groundwater resource predictions and decisions about whether to develop alternative supply sources. Developing infrastructure too soon can lead to unnecessary and expensive irreversible investments, but waiting too long can threaten water supply reliability. This study develops an adaptive infrastructure planning framework that applies Bayesian learning on groundwater observations to assess opportunities to learn about groundwater availability in the future and adapt infrastructure plans. This approach allows planners in data scarce regions to assess under what conditions a flexible infrastructure planning approach, in which initial plans are made but infrastructure development is deferred, can mitigate the risk of overbuilding infrastructure while maintaining water supply reliability in the face of uncertainty. This framework connects engineering options analysis from infrastructure planning to groundwater resources modeling. We demonstrate a proof-of-concept on a desalination planning case for the city of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where poor characterization of a fossil aquifer creates uncertainty in howmore »long current groundwater resources can reliably supply demand. We find that a flexible planning approach reduces the risk of over-building infrastructure compared to a traditional static planning approach by 40% with minimal reliability risk (<1%). This striking result may be explained by the slow-evolving nature of groundwater decline, which provides time for planners to react, in contrast to more sudden risks such as flooding where tradeoffs between cost and reliability risk are heightened. This Bayesian approach shows promise for many civil infrastructure domains by providing a method to quantify learning in environmental modeling and assess the effectiveness of adaptive planning.

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3. Smart Cities and the Challenges of Cross Domain Risk Management: Considering Interdependencies Between ICT-Security and Natural Hazards Disruptions

   https://doi.org/10.2478/jec-2019-0026  

   Uwe, Busbach-Richard ; Gerber, Brian J. ( December 2019 , Economics and Culture)

   Abstract Research purpose. Smart City technologies offer great promise for a higher quality of life, including improved public services, in an era of rapid and intense global urbanization. The use of intelligent or smart information and communication technologies to produce more efficient systems of services in those urban areas, captured under the broad rubric of “smart cities,” also create new vectors of risk and vulnerability. The aim of this article is to raise consideration of an integrated cross-domain approach for risk reduction based on the risks smart cities are exposed to, on the one hand, from natural disasters and, on the other, from cyber-attacks. Design / Methodology / Approach. This contribution describes and explains the risk profile for which smart cities are exposed to both natural disasters and cyber-attacks. The vulnerability of smart city technologies to natural hazards and cyber-attacks will first be summarized briefly from each domain, outlining those respective domain characteristics. Subsequently, methods and approaches for risk reduction in the areas of natural hazards and ICT security will be examined in order to create the basis for an integrated cross-domain approach to risk reduction. Differences are also clearly identified if an adaptation of a risk reduction pattern appearsmore »unsuitable. Finally, the results are summarized into an initial, preliminary integrated cross-domain approach to risk reduction. Findings. Risk management in the two domains of ICT security and natural hazards is basically similar. Both domains use a multilayer approach in risk reduction, both have reasonably well-defined regimes and established risk management protocols. At the same time, both domains share a policymaking and policy implementation challenge of the difficulty of appropriately forecasting future risk and making corresponding resource commitments to address future risk. Despite similarities, different concepts like the CIA Triad, community resilience, absorption capacity and so on exist too. Future research of these concepts could lead to improve risk management. Originality / Value / Practical implications. Cyber-attacks on the ICT infrastructure of smart cities are a major vulnerability – but relatively little systematic evaluation exists on the topic. Likewise, ICT infrastructure is vulnerable to natural disasters too – and the risk of more severe natural disasters in the context of a global trend toward massive cities is increasing dramatically. Explicit consideration of the issues associated with cross-domain integration of reduction of interdependent risk is a necessary step in ensuring smart city technologies also serve to promote longer-term community sustainability and resilience.« less
4. A political ecology of speculative urbanism: The role of financial and environmental speculation in Jakarta’s water crisis

   https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X221110883  

   Colven, Emma ( July 2022 , Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space)

   Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, is increasingly characterized by luxury real estate developments and high-profile infrastructural projects made possible by economic liberalization and finance capital. Yet these developments have contributed to Jakarta’s struggles with chronic flooding, land subsidence, and water shortages. This paper contributes an empirical study of the spatial-temporal dynamics of speculative urbanism and the associated impacts on water resources and flood events in Jakarta. I use an urban political ecology approach to analyze mainland and offshore development. First, I show how financial speculation generates flood risk and the overexploitation of water resources, producing uneven socio-spatial distributions of risk. These transformations in Jakarta’s hydroscape in turn threaten to undermine the city’s viability as a site for speculative investment. I thus show how speculative urbanism can be threatened or disrupted by nonhuman agencies. Second, I illustrate a second form of speculation, which I refer to as environmental speculation. As Jakarta’s water crisis has cast doubt on the future of the city itself as a place of habitation, the state explored an ambitious and potentially lucrative coastal defense project, while private developers have engaged in land reclamation. The turn toward offshore development illustrates how environmental speculation creates new opportunities for capital accumulation. Imore »advance two arguments: first, in order to capture the full costs of speculative urbanism, it is imperative that urban scholars attend to its ecological dimensions. Second, an urban political ecology approach advances our understandings of speculative urbanism by illuminating its contradictions and limits.« less
5. Integrated Policy Solutions for Water Scarcity in Agricultural Communities of the American Southwest

   https://doi.org/10.3390/systems9020026  

   Langarudi, Saeed P. ; Maxwell, Connie M. ; Fernald, Alexander G. ( June 2021 , Systems)

   The conventional approach of policy interventions in water management that focus on the portions of the system that directly relate to water often lead to unintended consequences that potentially exacerbate water scarcity issues and present challenges to the future viability of many rural agricultural communities. This paper deploys a system dynamics model to illustrate how expanding the policy space of hydrology models to include socioeconomic feedbacks could address these challenges. In this regard, policies that can potentially mitigate general water scarcity in a region of the American Southwest in southern New Mexico are examined. We selected and tested policies with the potential to diminish water scarcity without compromising the system’s economic performance. These policies included supporting choices that reduce or limit the expansion of water-intensive crops, promoting workforce participation, encouraging investment in capital, and regulating land use change processes. The simulation results, after the proposed boundary expansion, unveiled intervention options not commonly exercised by water decision-makers, bolstering the argument that integrated approaches to water research that include socioeconomic feedbacks are crucial for the study of agricultural community resilience.