Talk Title: Capturing Elements of Weather-Related Risks in a Climate Change Context
Abstract: Climate risk and resilience are two terms that go hand-in-hand. The
first must be quantified and characterised so that the latter can be
achieved for a business, a community, an infrastructure asset or an
ecosystem function or service. The requirement to assess climate risk is
now well established in the United Kingdom, an integral part of e.g.,
planning/regulation policy, service agreements, or adhering to industry
standards.
Current terminology and praxis used to assess
climate risk is strongly shaped by experiences in the disaster risk
management community. The hazard, or extreme weather event, sits
squarely in the centre of the risk framework, as the need to assess risk
only arise when we expect the occurrence of a hazard. The full
appreciation, or relevance, of the hazard becomes apparent only when
evaluated together with its companion elements: exposure and
vulnerability. The former often (in a climate change context) referring
to the spatial footprint of the hazard, and the latter characteristics
of the receptor that act to enhance or reduce the impact of the hazard.
In climate change science, several disciplines act to evolve our
understanding of each element.
This multi-disciplinary space, in
combination with the adoption of a risk framework evolved primarily for
disaster management makes for a rich learning environment, but it is a
difficult space for practitioners to navigate because there is much
discussion on how to quantify and capture each of those three risk
elements for multi-decadal time frames. In this talk we will explore,
with examples, some of these difficulties, highlighting the need for
innovation in how climate risk can be meaningfully captured in risk
assessments and associated metrics.