Reporting on the Seminar - Risk Interpretation and Action (RIA): Decision Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty

The paper reports on the World Social Science (WSS)

Fellows seminar on Risk Interpretation and Action (RIA),

undertaken in New Zealand in December, 2013. This

seminar was coordinated by the WSS Fellows program of

the International Social Science Council (ISSC), the RIA

working group of the Integrated Research on Disaster

Risk (IRDR) program, the IRDR International Center of

Excellence Taipei, the International START Secretariat

and the Royal Society of New Zealand. Twenty-five

early career researchers from around the world were

selected to review the RIA framework under the theme

of ‘decision-making under conditions of uncertainty’, and

develop novel theoretical approaches to respond to and

improve this framework. Six working groups emerged

during the seminar: 1. the assessment of water-related

risks in megacities; 2. rethinking risk communication;

3. the embodiment of uncertainty; 4. communication

in resettlement and reconstruction phases; 5. the

integration of indigenous knowledge in disaster risk

reduction; and 6. multi-scale policy implementation for

natural hazard risk reduction. This article documents

the seminar and initial outcomes from the six groups

organized; and concludes with the collective views of

the participants on the RIA framework.