Who Is at Risk? Building A Sociotechnical Approach to Disaster Risk Assessment

Since its original development for engineering and insurance applications, the adoption of disaster risk assessment has grown, inspiring innovations in modeling, modern data collection methods such as crowdsourcing and remote sensing, and, importantly, a more diverse set of stakeholders. While promising, this growth necessitates new approaches that meet the distinct needs of stakeholders with expanded priorities??"those who center vulnerable populations throughout the disaster lifecycle. In this talk, I present a sociotechnical approach to disaster risk assessment that meets these priorities through three requirements: (1) identifying who is affected, (2) determining how to support them, and (3) integrating the context of place and use. I demonstrate this approach through case studies spanning earthquake recovery planning in Nepal, recurrent flooding impacts in Michigan, hurricane preparedness in the Southern U.S., and landslide risk across multiple geographies. These applications leverage human-centered design, data fusion, and risk modeling to produce actionable information for stakeholders working to reduce disaster impacts on vulnerable communities as well as inform future risk modeling. Advancing this sociotechnical practice for disaster risk modeling requires the current and next generations of disaster researchers and practitioners to work across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries, integrating engineering methods with social science frameworks and community needs. Ultimately, this sociotechnical approach ensures vulnerable populations remain at the center of how we assess disaster impacts, ideally transforming disaster risk assessment from a technical exercise into a collaborative practice that reduces rather than exacerbates inequities exposed by disasters.

Speaker: Sabine Loos, University of Michigan

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