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Disaster risk information is spatial in nature and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing (RS) play an important key role by the services they provide to society. In this context, to risk management and governance, in general, and to civil protection, specifically (termed differently in many countries, and includes, for instance: civil contingencies in the UK, homeland security in the USA, disaster risk reduction at the UN level). The main impetus of this article is to summarize key contributions and challenges in utilizing and accepting GIS and RS methods and data for disaster risk governance, which includes public bodies, but also risk managers in industry and practitioners in search and rescue organizations. The article analyzes certain method developments, such as vulnerability indicators, crowdsourcing, and emerging concepts, such as Volunteered Geographic Information, but also investigates the potential of the topic Critical Infrastructure as it could be applied on spatial assets and GIS and RS itself. Intended to stimulate research on new and emerging fields, this article’s main contribution is to move spatial research toward a more reflective stance where opportunities and challenges are equally and transparently addressed in order to gain more scientific quality. As a conclusion, GIS and RS can play a pivotal role not just in delivering data but also in connecting and analyzing data in a more integrative, holistic way.

The agricultural sector could be one of the most vulnerable economic sectors to the impacts of climate change in the coming decades. Climate change impacts are related to changes in the growth period, extreme weather events, and changes in temperature and recipitation patterns, among others. All of these impacts may have significant consequences on agricultural production(Bates, et al.2008. A main issue regarding climate change impacts is related to the uncertainty associated with their occurrence. Climate change impacts can bestimated with simulation models based on several assumptions, among which the future patterns of emissions of greenhouse g asses are quite likely the most relevant, driving the development of future scenarios, i.e. plausible visions of how the future may unfold. Those scenarios are developed as storylines associated with different assumptions about climate and socioeconomic conditions and emissions, with reference figures, such as demographic projections, average global temperatures, etc.(Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2000). Within this context, climate change impact assessment is forced to consider multiple and interconnected sources of uncertainty in order to produce valuable information for policymakers.

21 p. Hydro-meteorological disasters have caused increasing losses in recent years. Efficient risk reduction policies require accurate assessment approaches, with careful consideration of costs, beyond direct tangible costs, which are commonly used in practice. Faced with possible risk reduction scenarios, limited financial resources require an improvement in the quality of cost estimation, thereby contributing to an efficient allocation of resources. This paper focuses on the concept of total costs of hydro-meteorological disasters, based on direct and indirect as well as tangible and intangible cost categories. These categories are defined and explained, supported by a comprehensive review of economic valuation methods. Based on this information, practice relevant suggestions are made concerning the most appropriate methods for different cases in terms of scale, availability of data and of technical resources. Our survey also provides critical insights to drawbacks of flood risk estimation, which need to be addressed and carefully dealt with in any future research in this area.

Water resources are facing several stresses in terms of quantity and quality. These pressures are closely related to the human interventions in fields like: agriculture, land-use/land use change, construction/management of reservoirs, pollutant emissions, and water /wastewater treatment, among others. Considering the critical role that water plays for agricultural production, any shock in water availability will have great implications for agricultural production, and through agricultural markets these impacts will reach the whole economy with economy-wide consequences. The aim of this report is to present a literature review about the state of the art methodology regarding the study of water issues using the CGE approach at global and national scale. The analysis of the different studies confirms the economy wide consequences of changes in water allocation, irrigation policies, and climate change, among others water related issues.

Texto completo: acesso restrito. p. 1163–1174 Submitted by Edileide Reis (leyde-landy@hotmail.com) on 2014-02-18T14:13:32Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucia Ceccato.pdf: 1057356 bytes, checksum: d79f1382b0532991559c622f8ef15eb7 (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by LIVIA FREITAS (livia.freitas@ufba.br) on 2014-07-28T14:31:15Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucia Ceccato.pdf: 1057356 bytes, checksum: d79f1382b0532991559c622f8ef15eb7 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2014-07-28T14:31:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Lucia Ceccato.pdf: 1057356 bytes, checksum: d79f1382b0532991559c622f8ef15eb7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 A methodological proposal aimed at improving the effectiveness of interactions between the scientific community and local actors for decision-making processes in water management was developed and tested to two case studies, in Europe and Asia: the Upper Danube (Danube) and Upper Brahmaputra (Brahmaputra) River Basins. The general objectives of the case studies were about identifying and exploring the potential of adaptation strategies to cope with flood risk in mountain areas. The proposal consists of a sequence of steps including participatory local workshops and the use of a decision support systems (DSS) tool. Workshops allowed for the identification of four categories of possible responses and a set of nine evaluation criteria, three for each of the three pillars of sustainable development: economy, society and the environment. They also led to the ranking of the broad categories of response strategies, according to the expectations and preferences of the workshop participants, with the aim of orienting and targeting further activities by the research consortium. The DSS tool was used to facilitate transparent and robust management of the information, the implementation of multi criteria decision analysis and the communication of the outputs. The outcomes of the implementation of the proposed methods and DSS tool are discussed to assess the potential to support decision-making processes in the field of climate change adaptation (CCA) and integrated water resources management (IWRM).

Bayesian networks (BNs) have been increasingly applied to support management and decision-making processes under conditions of environmental variability and uncertainty, providing logical and holistic reasoning in complex systems since they succinctly and effectively translate causal assertions between variables into patterns of probabilistic dependence. Through a theoretical assessment of the features and the statistical rationale of BNs, and a review of specific applications to ecological modelling, natural resource management, and climate change policy issues, the present paper analyses the effectiveness of the BN model as a synthesis framework, which would allow the user to manage the uncertainty characterising the definition and implementation of climate change adaptation policies. The review will let emerge the potentials of the model to characterise, incorporate and communicate the uncertainty, with the aim to provide an efficient support to an informed and transparent decision making process. The possible drawbacks arising from the implementation of BNs are also analysed, providing potential solutions to overcome them.

This work illustrates the preliminary findings of a participatory research process aimed at identifying responses for sustainable water management in a climate change perspective, in two river basins in Europe and Asia. The paper describes the methodology implemented through local workshops, aimed at eliciting and evaluating possible responses to flood risk. Participatory workshops allowed for the identification of four categories of possible responses and a set of nine evaluation criteria, three for each of the three pillars of sustainable development. The main outcome of such activities consists in the ranking of broad response categories instrumental to the objective of the Brahmatwinn research project, i.e. the identification of Integrated Water Resource Management Strategies (IWRMS) based upon the issues and preferences elicited from local experts. The mDSS tool was used to facilitate transparent and robust management of the information collected through Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) and communication of the outputs.

The ever greater role given to public participation by laws and regulations, in particular in the field of environmental management calls for new operational methods and tools for managers and practitioners. This paper analyses the potentials and the critical limitations of current approaches in the fields of simulation modelling (SM), public participation (PP) and decision analysis (DA), for natural resources management within the context of climate change research. The potential synergies of combining SM, PP and DA into an integrated methodological framework are identified and a methodological proposal is presented, called NetSyMoD (Network Analysis – Creative System Modelling – Decision Support), which aims at facilitating the involvement of stakeholders or experts in policy - or decision-making processes (P/DMP). A generic P/DMP is formalised in NetSyMoD as a sequence of six main phases: (i) Actors analysis; (ii) Problem analysis; (iii) Creative System Modelling; (iv) DSS design; (v) Analysis of Options; and (vi) Action taking and monitoring. Several variants of the NetSyMoD approach have been adapted to different contexts such as integrated water resources management and coastal management, and, recently it has been applied in climate change research projects. Experience has shown that NetSyMoD may be a useful framework for skilled professionals, for guiding the P/DMP, and providing practical solutions to problems encountered in the different phases of the decision/policy making process, in particular when future scenarios or projections have to be considered, such as in the case of developing and selecting adaptation policies. The various applications of NetSyMoD share the same approach for problem analysis and communication within the group of selected actors, based upon the use of creative thinking techniques, the formalisation of human-environment relationships through the DPSIR framework, and the use of multi-criteria analysis through a Decision Support System (DSS) software.

The Nostrum-DSS EU funded Co-ordination Action (CA) aims at contributing to the achievement of improved governance and planning in the field of sustainable water management within the Mediterranean Basin by establishing a network between the science, policy, and civil society spheres and through the development and dissemination of Best Practices Guidelines (BPGs) for the design and implementation of DSSs for IWRM in the Mediterranean Area. Decision Support Systems (DSS) have a great theoretical potential as tools for the identification of optimal water resource management regimes in the Mediterranean basin, thus helping policy makers (PMs) to bring the principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) into practice. However, such tools are only episodically exploited outside the academia. This article presents the outcomes of project activities targeting the development of more effective communication strategies, in order to facilitate the development of research products with greater potential for been up taken by the expected end-users, i.e. the community of policy makers, and their staffs, advisors, consultants, etc., in the Mediterranean Region.