Operationalizing resilience engineering for natural hazard triggered technological (Natech) events

Abstract

From abstract: Several studies have pointed out the increased frequency of natural hazard triggered technological accidents (known as Natechs). The study of past Natech events have demonstrated that they can have area wide impacts on people and property with ripple effects across socio-technical systems. For example, in 2018, a vapor explosion occurred at an aluminum plant in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, due to flooding, causing destruction of neighboring businesses, nearby infrastructure and people’s homes, and affecting evacuation for both the floods and the accident. Hence, in highly industrialized and urbanized areas, when Natech events occur, societies may face unexpected events making enhancing resilience essential. This requires a “whole-of-society”, “whole-of-government” and an all hazards approach. The increased popularity of societal resilience reflects its value in dealing with the increased complexity of today's society, addressing survival and even prosperity when facing unexpected challenging situations. In this context, Resilience Engineering (RE) contributions address the need to improve the ability to design and architect roles to enhance highly adaptable socio-technical systems working across purposes and different scales (individual, organizational and societal). Its objective is to improve capabilities to understand and navigate complexity, interdependencies, multiple trade-offs, limited resources and continuous changes. A basic premise is that these resilience capabilities exist but are often overlooked or neglected, therefore, we use the RE concepts as glasses to uncover existing capabilities in Natech contexts.This presentation addresses the added value that RE offers to deal with Natech events