Multi-hazard and multi-risk decision-support tools as a part of participatory risk governance: Feedback from civil protection stakeholders

The number of people affected by natural hazards is growing, as many regions of the world become subject to multiple hazards. Although volume of geophysical, sociological and economic knowledge is increasing, so are the losses from natural catastrophes. The slow transfer from theory to practice might lay in the difficulties of the communication process from science to policy-making, including perceptions by stakeholders from disaster mitigation practice regarding the usability of developed tools. As scientific evidence shows, decision-makers are faced with the challenge of not only mitigating against single hazards and risks, but also multiple risks, which must include the consideration of their interrelations. As the multi hazard and risk concept is a relatively young area of natural risk governance, there are only a few multi risk models and the experience of practitioners as to how to use these models is limited. To our knowledge, scientific literature on stakeholders perceptions of multi risk models is lacking. In this article we identify perceptions of two decision making tools, which involve multi hazard and multi risk The first one is a generic, multi risk framework based on the sequential Monte Carlo method to allow for a straightforward and flexible implementation of hazard interactions, which may occur in a complex system. The second is a decision making tool that integrates direct input from stakeholders by attributing weights to different components and constructing risks ratings. Based on the feedback from stakeholders, we found that interest in multi risk assessment is high but that its application remains hampered by the complexity of processes involved. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.