#ISSS2016 Boulder

2724 A changing climate, expanding ex-urban residential development, and increasing pressures on ecosystem services raise global concerns over growing losses associated with wildland fires. New management paradigms acknowledge that fire is inevitable and often uncontrollable, and focus on living with fire rather than attempting to eliminate it from the landscape. A notable example from the U.S. is the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, which aims to bring multiple landowners and stakeholders together to achieve three broadly defined goals: resilient landscapes, fire-adapted human communities, and safe and effective response to fire. Implicit in the structure of these three goals is the nexus of three systems: the ecological system, the social system, and the fire management system, respectively. This systems-based structure reflects a perspective that contextualizes fire as a disturbance agent that influences and is in turn influenced by other agents and processes within a broader socio-ecological system. While the need for transformative system change is well-recognized, at least three central challenges remain: (1) the need to accept that how fires are managed is in many instances the limiting factor of system behaviour; (2) the need to improve our understanding of the characteristics and complexities of the fire management system itself; and (3) perhaps most fundamentally, the need to coherently apply systems analysis principles in order to improve system performance. In this presentation I will attempt to bridge these gaps by applying systems thinking to contemporary wildfire management issues in the U.S. One thread of the presentation will focus on synthesizing findings from various lines of fire-related research and identifying how collectively they reflect systemic flaws stemming from feedbacks, delays, bounded rationality, misaligned incentives, and other factors. Particular attention will be devoted to the “fire paradox,” whereby a legacy of fire exclusion in fire-prone forests has led to hazardous accumulations of flammable vegetation such that future fires burn with higher intensity and are more resistant to control; today’s “success” begets tomorrows failure. The second thread will outline a roadmap for redesigning the fire management system so that behaviour better aligns with purpose. This discussion will focus on recommended actions including breaking down institutional silos, investing in pre-fire assessment and planning, improving monitoring and performance evaluation, and adopting core risk management principles. Ideally this line of research will yield insights that can lead to meaningful systemic change and improved fire management outcomes.

Description: Adequate resilience and appropriate response (interventions)  to crises and disasters and continuous improvement thereof is a growing global need and a social responsibility in view of the seemingly growing number of disasters endangering a growing number of people and even our civilization. Can we do a better job of anticipating, systemically  understanding and mitigating the   cycles of crisis and recovery   by combining exploratory ‘crisis science’ with long-term ‘sustainability science’? Can we unravel the antithesis of incompatible response systems and find new ways to integrate scientific, technological, cultural,  ethical, political and  economic influences? Preparedness must systemically consider the  often emergent interplay of supporting and obstructing factors.   Actual interventions (responses)  must holistically evaluate the total situation and make decisions, unfortunately to be performed under high uncertainty, extreme  stress and time pressure. Despite the often singularity of disasters we have to identify similarities and powerful abstraction in order to support scientific analysis and improved mitigation. A long range target could be an interdisciplinary ‘Strategic Crisis Science’.

The panel of international experts will discuss these issues from their different backgrounds and national priorities with respect to preparedness and interventions.  We will attempt to esablish common grounds and basic solutions.

Chair: Gerhard Chroust

The Pakistan flooding, July-November 2010, caused ~2000 fatalities, displaced 20,000,000 inhabitants for weeks to many months, and was 7.5 on a duration-area affected-intensity scale that compares flood magnitudes on a global basis. Exceptional damage was inflicted on crops and cropland and on agriculture support systems such as canals and levees. Total economic impact reached 43 billion USD; 4,500,000 mainly agricultural workers lost their employment for 2010-2011. The catastrophic flood was associated with unusually intense but not unprecedented rainfall in the upland catchment. Most damage was caused by multiple failures of irrigation system levees, and by barrage-related backwater effects that initiated failures and led to avulsions (sudden changes in flow location). The meteorological events did not cause the catastrophe. Instead, the lack of planned accommodation to the river's high sediment load set the stage for super-elevation of the Indus above the surrounding terrain, dangerous levee failures, and channel avulsions. The dynamics of this remarkable event demonstrate that planning for major flow diversions is a necessary component of effective flood control along this and other avulsion-prone rivers. This disaster will serve as an example to discuss the ‘lessons learnt’ for all stakeholders.

2791 What our media named as terrorism today are perceived as revolution by some. What we call revolution in mainland China and Russia, are no less violent and cruel than terrorism too. This paper observes and identifies the roots, the triggering historic events, the similarities among the differences, of the two huge phenomena and their two driving ideologies, i.e. the Extreme Islamism and the Bloody Communism, that have deep influence to our time and our daily life. As one of our subject has been just fading away into history (not really) and another is still going on while this paper is being written, we highlight the similarities or even isomorph of these two violent social phenomena, raising a question behind such similarity – what are the driven forces that enable these phenomena to emerge, or, why on this planet a certain number of people are doomed to believe, engage, fight for, and victimized by such pathological ideologies?