Interdisciplinary Hazards: Methodological Insights from a Multi-Sectoral Study of Drought in the UK

Bettina Lange
Additional contact information
Bettina Lange: Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 17, 1-18

Abstract: This article discusses systems-based interdisciplinary research that seeks to understand interactions between natural and social dimensions of hazards. The discussion in this paper is motivated by two objectives. First, to present a novel methodology—Systems-Interactions Maps—for an integrated systems-based assessment of the linked social and natural causes, pathways, and consequences of climate related hazards, such as drought in the UK. Second, the article seeks to contribute to discussion of an under-explored topic: the actual process of developing and applying conceptual frameworks in interdisciplinary research groups, here for the purposes of mapping relationships between successive historical drought episodes. The findings based on data from the 1976 and 1995 droughts in the UK show that identified drivers, responses, and impacts can differ between natural and social science disciplines; that there is a degree of independence of social from natural dimensions of a hazard; and that the relative emphasis on social or natural drivers of a drought is shaped by the institutional and governance structure of the water sector.

Keywords: interdisciplinary hazard; historic droughts; water resources management; systems-interactions maps; social-ecological systems (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/7183/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/17/7183/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:17:p:7183-:d:407963

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().