Emergence (from the Latin emergere) refers to the formation of new properties of a complex system through the interaction of its elements.
On June 14, the first results of our project emerged during the first workshop in Vienna. Many good ideas, suggestions, discussions, connections between the participants and glimpses into the future also emerged. The results of the first workshop will feed into the next steps in the project. EMERGENCE is born!
The workshop was aimed at decision-makers and managers in natural hazard management in Austria. We involved different directorates of the relevant federal ministries as well as provincial authorities, scientific institutions and natural hazard experts from transport infrastructure and electricity grid operators. Together, we discussed the influencing factors and effects of torrential damage events in Austria. The first part of the workshop focused on identifying these factors and assigning them to the three sub-areas of “environmental drivers”, “exposure dynamics” and “mitigation measures”. This was then used to discuss where gaps in knowledge, data or responsibility can still be found. Which sub-processes, impacts or factors should we place at the center of the EMERGENCE project? All factors were assessed according to their relevance. These will later be used in a statistical model. In addition, physioclimatic subregions in Austria were discussed, which should represent homogeneous spatial regions for natural hazard events.
In the second part of the workshop, the Coupled-Human-Landscape model according to Hossain et al (2020) was presented and discussed in detail. Which components are missing? Where are interactions or feedback not yet mapped? What are the key building blocks in relation to torrential events? Furthermore, resilience patterns in Austria and best-practice examples of successful sustainable risk management were discussed.
The morning was a great success for our project and we were able to gather a lot of input and suggestions. We would like to thank all participants for their contributions, their willingness to discuss and their support in the creation/development of our project!
Image Credit: Maxwell Ingham via Unsplash