Urban Natural Hazard Risk Management Systems to Enhance Resilience: Flood Risk in Seoul, South Korea

Abstract

In recent decades, natural hazard risks have been exacerbated by climate change and development. Urban areas tend to be at a greater risk, due to the dense population, concentrated socioeconomic activities and infrastructure, as well as the interdependency of these factors. Given that climate change and urban growth are expected to continue, managing urban natural hazard risks has become one of critical challenges that societies face. For natural hazard risk management and reduction, researchers and practitioners have increasingly used theories and frameworks that have broad appeal in both academia and in practice, such as resilience and governance. However, research on these popular concepts and frameworks has shown gaps between the academic discourse and application in practice. The gaps include a lack of clear definitions that practitioners can use to operationalize and put it practice theories, such as resilience, and a lack of theoretical and conceptual understanding of the frameworks (e.g., risk governance) by practitioners. There is also a growing need for urban natural hazard risk management to take an integrated approach to managing risks, by taking into account climate change and sustainable development. This dissertation examines these challenges, particularly focusing on flood risk, which has been the costliest and most frequent disaster in the world during the last three decades. The overarching questions that this work aims to answer are: How can conceptual frameworks of risk and resilience be better applied in practice and what strategies can contribute to the application of these frameworks? and How has integrated urban flood risk research shifted in recent decades in response to increasing concerns about climate change and development, and which research themes can contribute to advance integrated urban flood risk research? These questions are addressed in three independent analyses under preparation for publication, included as appendices in this dissertation. I answer the first question through two empirical studies of Seoul, South Korea, a city that has been endorsed as one of the United Nations’ resilience role model cities for flood and earthquake hazard planning. This dissertation includes three papers. Appendix A examines how Seoul’s flood resilience has been built by implementing measures that harness institutional adaptive capacity. Appendix B illustrates the strategies and challenges associated with promoting participatory risk governance for flood risk management (FRM) in Seoul. For Appendix A, I collected interview data from the key informants involved in managing flood risk at the city and local (i.e., district and sub-district levels). For Appendix B, I deployed mixed-methods that include both qualitative (i.e., interview) and quantitative (i.e., survey) data collections. I interviewed key informants and surveyed regular local residents to discern their understanding of flood risk. The findings of the Seoul, South Korea case studies demonstrate how to operationalize recent academic theories and frameworks in urban FRM practice; the studies also address some challenges to practicing and promoting the implementation of the ideas relevant to the theories and frameworks. I then answer the second question in Appendix C by examining the shift in integrated urban flood risk research and presenting the important current themes in the research field. To conduct this study, I performed bibliometric analysis. The findings of the bibliometric analysis suggest that climate change has been a central theme in the integrated urban flood risk research of the last sixteen years, by forming a cluster with the keywords implying drivers, resources, and concepts, pertaining to climate change impacts. The result also shows that flood risk management strategies focusing on sustainability (e.g., green roof and stormwater management system) are increasingly emerging in the integrated urban flood risk literature. The result of this study also reveals the topics and themes, such as urbanization and resilience, that integrated approaches to urban FRM could build on.