Integrated Landslide Risk Management Strategies

Prof. Dr. S. Greiving & J. Mayer

1. Introduction • Risk management is defined as adjustment policies that intensify

efforts to lower the potential for loss from future extreme events. • Risk management is a kind of decision-making and thereby a

normative, politically influenced strategy about tolerating or altering risks, the authority in charge (democratically legitimised) has to decide about.

• The action decided upon is the result of a weighting process between risks and chances or costs and benefits which are related with a certain decision.

• What is the level of risk, a society (or any stakeholder) is willing to accept? What are the protection goals for the different protection objects that are threatened by specific hazards?

Figure 1: Disaster cycle and relevance of communication

2. EARLY WARNING SYSTEMS • Objective of an integrative landslide early warning system, as

designed and implemented in the ILEWS (Integrative landslide early warning systems) project: gather information on potentially catastrophic slope failures in advance.

• To develop such a prototype, the specifications of the Platform for the Promotion of Early Warning (UN/ISDR – PPEW) are taken as a basis. It defines four elements:– 1. Previous knowledge of the risks, which threaten a community (Risk-

Knowledge)– 2. Technical monitoring and warning services for these risks (Monitoring

and Warning Services)– 3. Dissemination of warnings, which are comprehensible for the people

concerned (Dissemination and Communication)– 4. Knowledge of the course of action and necessary precautions in

order to act appropriately (Response capability)• ILEWS must not end with providing a warning, but has to integrate

social science, humanities and decision making processes.• Efficency and effectiveness of an EWS has to be compared with

alternative strategies.

3. RISK ZONING AS COMPLEMENTARY OR ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY

• Space can be defined as an area where human beings and their artifacts are threatened by spatially relevant hazards.

• The reaction of tolerating or altering risk can be understood as an integrated part of the given socio-economic structures with spatial planning as a certain part of a reaction.

• Spatial planning makes decisions for society regarding if and how certain spaces will be used.

• Spatial planning has the instruments at hand to keep areas of land free of future development or limit the possible land-uses that are: prone to hazards (e.g. landslide-prone areas), needed to lower the effects of a hazardous event (e.g. water retention areas) and that will be needed to guarantee the effectiveness of response activities (e.g. escape lanes and gathering points).

• Normally, risk zoning bases upon different intensity classes that could also be named e.g. white/yellow-white/yellow/blue/red like by the “Gefahrenkarten” in Switzerland.

Figure 2: Hazard zone map for a Swiss municipality. Source: BUA 2006. Figure 3: Risk map for a French municipality. Source: PRIM 2005.

Figure 4: Hazard zones, city of Nals, Southern Tyrol

Figure 5: Damage potentials

• Spatial planning normally lacks of instruments to influence given damage potentials in already built-up areas.

• Here early-warning comes into play in order to avoid damages to persons, often combined with structural mitigation measures.

• Measures, based on mandatory decisions of public administration as well as measures which are in the responsibility of private stakeholders need to be accepted for their implementation.

• Visible when looking at evacuation orders, building protection measures to be taken by private households, risk awareness etc.

• Climate change related effects on temperature and precipitation, will certainly lead to new uncertainties, because past events might be not representative anymore.

• When public decision-making does not have precise information at hand, restrictions for private property rights are probably legally not justifiable anymore.

• Hereby, justification of actions and consensus about thresholds and response actions becomes more important.

• Consequently, any effective landslide risk management has to be cooperative and inclusive.

• Those who manage and communicate risks to the public need to start with an understanding of emotional responses towards risk.

• Discourse based risk governance process means consulting and involving stakeholders like people living in landslide prone areas from the early beginning of the process and considering at least their concerns when taking decisions.

• The risk governance approach has recently been regarded as important by the new Territorial Agenda of the EC, launched in 2007 in Leipzig, Germany, as part of the priority 5 “Promoting Trans-European Risk Management.”

• When looking at the EU directive 2007/60/EC on the assessment and management of flood risks it becomes obvious, how important risk governance principles are for today’s EU policy. Art 10 § 2 states: “Member States shall encourage active involvement of interested parties in the production, review and updating of the flood risk management plans.“

• The Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) which came into force by EU Directive 2001/42/EC in 2001 offers a suitable procedural frame for implementing a risk governance approach.

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Scoping

Identification of effects

Description of effects

Evaluation of effects

Integration of IA into decision making

•Define problem and associated risk issues•Identify potential stakeholders•Begin consultation

Initiation•Define problem and associated risk issues•Identify potential stakeholders•Begin consultation

Initiation

•Define scope of the decision•Identify Hazards using risk scenarios•Begin stakeholder analysis / risk perception•Start the risk information library

Preliminary Analysis

•Define scope of the decision•Identify Hazards using risk scenarios•Begin stakeholder analysis / risk perception•Start the risk information library

Preliminary Analysis

•Define methodology for frequency and consequences•Estimate frequency of risk scenarios•Refine stakeholder analysis through dialogue

Risk estimation

•Define methodology for frequency and consequences•Estimate frequency of risk scenarios•Refine stakeholder analysis through dialogue

Risk estimation

•Estimate and integrate benefits and costs•Assess stakeholder acceptance of risk

Risk evaluation

•Estimate and integrate benefits and costs•Assess stakeholder acceptance of risk

Risk evaluation

•Identify feasible risk management options•Evaluate effectiveness, cost and risks of options•Assess stakeholder acceptance of proposed actions•Evaluate options for dealing with residual risk•Assess stakeholder acceptance of residual risk

Risk manage-ment

•Identify feasible risk management options•Evaluate effectiveness, cost and risks of options•Assess stakeholder acceptance of proposed actions•Evaluate options for dealing with residual risk•Assess stakeholder acceptance of residual risk

Risk manage-ment

•Develop an implementation plan•Evaluate effectiveness of risk management process•Establish a monitoring process

Monitoring •Develop an implementation plan•Evaluate effectiveness of risk management process•Establish a monitoring process

MonitoringMonitoring

Figure 4: Integration of stakeholder into the process of assessing and managing risks.

4.2 Cooperative landslide risk management – practice• Referring to the International Risk Governance Council the core

element of risk management is communication. In the context of cooperative landslide risk management, the elements “information”and “knowledge” gain in importance.

• Starting point: is the situation perceived as problematic by theaffected population?

• What is at stake (interest analysis)?• Critical question: How to take care for the commitment of

collaborating stakeholders? • Do you able to offer a valuable product which is from interest to the

end-users?• Large landslides which cause fatalities and economic damage do

not occur without any warnings. Environmental changes within landslide prone areas can be observed before the event.

• Thereby it is necessary to gather such specific information in order to know which prevention or mitigation measures to implement.

Figure 3: Different needs of different actors concerning contents of maps by the example of the Weißeritz-Regio mapping project.

Different actors have different needs.

• The goal of the concept is to use all potentially available information about the environment, especially referred to landslides, which in particular might be collected by different groups of locals.

• The idea is to gather all the information of the local people and operators to use this for landslide risk management options. Thequality of the information must be controlled. On this level local experts are able to do so.

• The ideal process of decision making includes the decision aboutthe measure itself. Thus the question is which measure (e.g. a technical early warning system) to implement in this process.

• Empirical studies show that this is the basis for acceptance.• In collaboration with the local and regional players (residents,

operators and experts) and depending on the situation also together with scientists, the implementation of the concertedly negotiated measure can be implemented.

• Local people, operators and experts who were integrated in the first phase of the risk management process, should be involved in thisdecision-making process.

5 CONCLUSIONS• Concept can be seen as communication and information chain which

is not linear, but integrates the whole range of possible prevention measures from early warning, risk zoning to building protection.

• Has been used for settings in the Swabian Apls (Germany) and Southern Tyrol (Italy).

• It lowers not only the physical vulnerability, but also the v. of institutional settings (misfits in interplay between institutions involved as well as decision-making authorities and the affected public).

• Obligatory due to given EC legislation.• Outcome of an EC seminar on risk governance: “In many disciplines

risk is still being understood as a mathematical term (function of frequency and magnitude of an event and its consequences). This is particular important for natural hazards, enormous damage potentials, but also social vulnerabilities are related with. It is recommended to widen the focus of a potential follow-up Risk Goverscience Seminar to this field of action. Moreover, it is intended to address inclusiveness by every risk related call within the Research Framework Programme.”