1. Risk Governance:
Resilience for Urban Risk:
International Disaster Reduction
Conference
Davos, August 28, 2012
Ortwin Renn
Stuttgart University and
DIALOGIK gemeinnützige GmbH

2. IRGC’s RISK GOVERNANCE FRAMEWORK
Getting a Who needs to
broadUnderstanding
picture know what,
Deciding
of the risk Pre-assessment when?
Appraisal Communication Management
The knowledge Who needs to
needed for do what, when?
Characterisation
judgements and and evaluation
Is the risk
decisions tolerable,
acceptable or
unacceptable?
Introducing the IRGC’s Risk Governance Framework

3. Role of vulnerability and resilience in the
IRGC risk governance framework
 Risk: Probability of a risk agent (hazard)
impacting on a risk absorbing system (target)
and causing specific extent of damage
 Vulnerability: The extent to which the risk
absorbing system reacts to the stress induced
by the risk agent
 Resilience : The extent to which the risk
absorbing system has the capacity to cope
with stress induced by the risk agent

4. Main Objectives for Resilience
1.to guarantee the functional continuity
of the services provided by urban
infrastructures in times of stress and
disaster
2.to limit the extent of losses and
impacts in the urban area if a disaster
strikes
3.to ensure fast recovery if the
infrastructure is severely damaged

5. Criteria for Securing Functional Continuity
a. Structural (in)stability: ability to cope with stress
disrupting, impeding or otherwise affecting the
delivery of crucial services (total, temporary)
b. Organisational coping capability: ability to cope
with performance deficits affecting safe operation
or delivery of key services
c. System disturbance: Lack of pre- or post-service
input or output causing breakdown or
disturbance (up- or downstream).

6. Criteria for Reduction of Impact
a. Technical robustness: structural provisions
designed to withstand stress and/or limit losses
in terms of human lives, capital and ecosystems
if crucial services are discontinued or affected
b. Resilience in service production: possibility to
secure crucial services by other means
(redundant systems, diversity, substitutes, multi-
functional systems)
c. Social flexibility and responsiveness: capability
of institutions to cope with secondary impacts
(institutional, political, social, psychological)

7. Criteria for Ease of Recovery
a. Availability of resources: technical and financial
capability to start and complete recovery in due
time (including new financial instruments such as
catastrophe bonds)
b. Organisational skills: capacity of emergency and
recovery institutions to rebuild or substitute
crucial services in due time
c. Organisational Learning: capacity to learn from
the disaster and to improve the future resilience
of the remodelled system

8. CONCLUSIONS
 Need for quantitative and qualitative indicators
for vulnerability
 Three main criteria: functionality of system;
impact limitation and ease of recovery
 Division into nine subcriteria
 These subcriteria can be further structured into
indicators and subindicators
 Test of indicators will be next step
 Invitation for further research