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Flood Risk and Social Justice is a response to the rising
significance of floods and flood-related disasters worldwide, as an
initiative to promote a socially just approach to the problems of
flood risk. It integrates the human-social and the technological
components to provide a holistic view. This book treats flooding as
a multi-dimensional human and natural world tragedy that must be
accommodated using all the social and technological means that can
be mobilised before, during and after the flooding event. It covers
socially just flood risk mitigation practices which necessitate a
wide range of multidisciplinary approaches, starting from social
and wider environmental needs, including feedback cycles between
human needs and technological means. Flood Risk and Social Justice
looks at how to judge whether a risk is acceptable or not by
addressing an understanding of social and phenomenological
considerations rather than simple calculations of probabilities
multiplied by unwanted outcomes and their balancing between costs
and benefits. It is argued that the present 'flood management'
practice should be largely replaced by the social justice approach
where particular attention is given to deciding what is the right
thing to do within a much wider context. Thus it insists upon the
validity of modes of human understanding which cannot be addressed
within the limited context of modern science. Flood Risk and Social
Justice is written to support a wide range of audiences and seeks
to improve the dialogue between researchers and practitioners from
different disciplines (including post-graduate engineering,
environmental and social science students, industry practitioners,
academics, planners, environmental advocacy groups and
environmental law professionals) who have a strong interest in a
new kind of social justice work that can act as a continuous
counter-balance to the various mechanisms that unceasingly give
rise to profound injustices. More information about this book can
be found in this article written for the WaterWiki by the author:
http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/FloodRiskandSocialJustice
Authors: Zoran Vojinovic is Associate Professor at the UNESCO-IHE
Institute for Water Education, Delft, the Netherlands, with almost
20 years of consulting and research experience in various aspects
of water industry in New Zealand, Australia, Asia, Europe,
Central/South America and the Caribbean. Michael B. Abbott is
Emeritus Professor at the UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education,
Delft, the Netherlands, and a Director of the European Institute
for Industrial Leadership in Brussels. He founded and developed the
disciplines of Computational Hydraulics and Hydroinformatics and
co-founded, the Journal of Hydroinformatics with Professor Roger
Falconer.
Urban Hydroinformatics: Data, Models and Decision Support for
Integrated Urban Water Management is an introduction to
hydroinformatics applied to urban water management. It shows how to
make the best use of information and communication technologies for
manipulating information to manage water in the urban environment.
The book covers the acquisition and analysis of data from urban
water systems to instantiate mathematical models or calculations,
which describe identified physical processes. The models are
operated within prescribed management procedures to inform decision
makers, who are responsible to recognized stakeholders. The
application is to the major components of the urban water
environment, namely water supply, treatment and distribution,
wastewater and storm water collection, treatment and impact on
receiving waters and groundwater, and urban flooding. Urban
Hydroinformatics pays particular attention to modeling, decision
support through procedures, economics and management, and
implementation in developing countries. The book is written with
Post-graduate students, researchers and practicing engineers in all
aspects of urban water management in mind. Visit the IWA WaterWiki
to read an article by the authors:
http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/Urbanhydroinformatics
This title is now available in Hardback: please note change of ISBN
from 9781843392743 to 9781780401362.
Urban Hydroinformatics: Data, Models and Decision Support for
Integrated Urban Water Management is an introduction to
hydroinformatics applied to urban water management. It shows how to
make the best use of information and communication technologies for
manipulating information to manage water in the urban environment.
The book covers the acquisition and analysis of data from urban
water systems to instantiate mathematical models or calculations,
which describe identified physical processes. The models are
operated within prescribed management procedures to inform decision
makers, who are responsible to recognized stakeholders. The
application is to the major components of the urban water
environment, namely water supply, treatment and distribution,
wastewater and storm water collection, treatment and impact on
receiving waters and groundwater, and urban flooding. Urban
Hydroinformatics pays particular attention to modeling, decision
support through procedures, economics and management, and
implementation in developing countries. The book is written with
Post-graduate students, researchers and practicing engineers in all
aspects of urban water management in mind. Visit the IWA WaterWiki
to read an article by the authors:
http://www.iwawaterwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Articles/Urbanhydroinformatics
This title is now available in Hardback: please note change of ISBN
from 9781843392743 to 9781780401362.
According to the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT), over the
last seventy years, floods have shown the fastest rate of increase
relative to any other type of disasters. Devastation due to these
events occurs almost daily. Even though our technological
capabilities for dealing with floods have advanced rapidly over the
same period, and while global economic growth per capita has
doubled, flood events have become ever more disastrous. Does this
mean that our technological developments have advanced
independently from the social and wider ecological needs? Flood
Risk: The Holistic Perspective is a direct response to this
question and it argues that this paradoxical situation is a result
from our narrow and fragmented perception of reality which has been
characteristic of our academic disciplines and government agencies.
It suggests that the way forward can be found only if we broaden
our view and learn how the natural or social phenomena can provoke
a response in a society, or a social group, which in turn can
trigger the technical developments, and so on, again and again, in
what has the potential to become a network of interactions and
relationships through positive feedback (or coevolving) cycles. The
holistic perspective however may raise the following question: If
everything is connected to everything else, how can we ever hope to
understand anything? Our response draws from the understandings
brought by complexity theory where individual elements coevolve
together both in development and application. This recognition
opens a new analysis which goes beyond the direct objects or actors
of concern (risk forecasting, early warning, land-use planning
technology and systems for example), and into the relationships
between them. The book suggests that our initial response to this
and many other challenges is to change our perception from a
disciplinary and defensive one to a progressive (or transcendental)
and transdiciplinary, i.e., the one that turns challenges into the
possibilities that can re-shape our future. The book is structured
in eight chapters. Chapter 1 provides exposure to the complexity of
flood-related issues and illustrates diversity of multiple points
of view. Chapter 2 elaborates on the history of holistic thinking
with connection to the flood resilience process. Chapter 3
discusses the holistic risk governance approach which progresses
beyond the integrated urban flood management. Chapter 4 describes
the Green Cities Initiative, an initiative which is essentially
holistic in its nature as it aims to improve transport, energy
efficiency, industrial metabolism including water supply and
distribution as well as drainage and sewerage services through the
holistic lens of interactions between different sectors. Chapter 5
discusses various risk assessment practices and it concludes that
any practice that omits social, ethical and wider ecological points
of view will be severely restricted in its scope and its reach.
Chapter 6 describes the root causes of floods in the Pasig-Marikina
River Basin in Metro Manila, Philippines. Chapter 7 reflects upon
the key issues and challenges from 2011 Thailand floods. Finally,
Chapter 8 presents some of the key aspects concerning urban
stormwater management practice in Beijing, China.
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