The Spatial Dimension of Risk: How Geography Shapes the Emergence of Riskscapes

Description

Through its exploration of the spatial dimensions of risk, this book offers a brand new approach to theorizing risk, and significant improvements in how to manage, tolerate and take risks. A broad range of risks are examined, including natural hazards, climate change, political violence, and state failure. Case studies range from the Congo to Central Asia, from tsunami and civil war affected areas in Sri Lanka to avalanche hazards in Austria. In each of these cases, the authors examine the importance and role of space in the causes and differentiation of risk, in how we can conceptualize risk from a spatial perspective and in the relevance of space and locality for risk governance. This new approach - endorsed by Ragnar Lofsted and Ortwin Renn, two of the worlds leading and most prolific risk analysts - is essential reading for those charged with studying, anticipating and managing risks.

Detlef Mi? ller-Mahn is Professor of social geography and director of ZENEB (Center for Natural Risks and Development Bayreuth) at the University of Bayreuth, Germany.

'The Spatial Dimension of Risk offers fresh, practical ways of seeing risk, governance and space. It combines previously separate approaches: sociology of risk, geography of hazard and politics of policy. The authors invite us to think about war, flood, disease and terrorism in new ways - changing our thought as profoundly as Beck's 'Risk Society' 20 years ago.' - Benjamin Wisner, disaster management consultant and author of Disaster Risk Reduction: Cases from Urban Africa (Earthscan 2009), Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction (Routledge 2011) and Disaster Management: International Lessons in Risk Reduction, Response and Recovery (upcoming Routledge 2013) 'The book gives the floor to a central dimension of risk, namely its spatiality. Spatiality comes in many different disguises, in the Global South as well as in the North, be it state border policies, propagation of contagious diseases, distribution of drought or landslide risk, or the question on which scale a risk should be managed in a most optimal way. With the concept of 'Riskscapes', the book provides an innovative and comprehensive frame for these widely diverse aspects of risk.' - Jakob Rhyner, Director of the United Nations University Institute for Environment and Human Security and Vice Rector in Europe of the United Nations University 'This is an important book to read if you are involved in risk management and or spatial information systems like GIS. It will challenge conventional thinking and cause the reader to think about risk in new ways. As a result, it will lead to thinking about developing new applications that are oriented to risk management. The editor has done an excellent job pulling this book together. You will not only learn from this book, but it will likely further your career with the content embedded between the covers. One of the best books on spatial information you can read.' - Jeff Thurston, 3D Visualization World