Page - 418 - in Loss and Damage from Climate Change - Concepts, Methods and Policy Options

418 R.Mechler et al. 17.5.5 UnderstandingPast Impacts forProjectingFuture Risk:ForensicsandScenarioAnalysis Projecting future risk and resilience requires a good understanding of observed events and factors driving impacts.Disaster forensics, the studyof root causes, has seen increasingattention;asakeyworkelement theFloodResilienceAllianceover the last fewyears developed and applied its forensic approach, termedPost-Event ReviewCapability (PERC) to an increasing number of flood disasters around the world2 (Venkateswaranetal.2015;Keatingetal.2016b;Zurich2014a,b,2015a,b). Thepointofdeparture fordisaster forensics,an inter-andtransdisciplinaryresearch effort, hasbeen theunderstanding that thewealthofdisaster risk informationavail- ablehasnotbeensufficientlyeffective tohelphalt the increase in risk.Anumberof propositionshavebeensuggestedby forensics towork towardsactionable informa- tion to reduce risk andbuild resilience-all ofwhich are of fundamental importance for theLossandDamageDebate (seeIRDR2011):(i)Risk reduction:Moreprobing researchcoupledwithactors’ rolesvisibilityandtransparencywill lead to increased investment into risk reduction; (ii) Integration:More integrated (inter-and transdis- ciplinary)andparticipatory researchwill producemoreuseful andeffective results; (iii) IdentificationandCommunicationof RiskManagement Roles:More effective andsustainedcommunicationoffindings is required. Oneentrypoint for takingretrospectivedisaster forensicsforwardtoinformLoss andDamagetackledintheAlliancehasbeentoexplore its integrationwithprospec- tive scenario analysis. Scenario analysis is a technique and structured process for projectingoutkeyvariablesof interest (in this casedisaster riskand resilience)asa functionofitsdriversbasedonsharednarrativesaboutfuturesocio-economicdevel- opmentandotherinputs.Scenarioanalysishasbeenwidelyusedforglobalproblems (e.g., IPCC climate scenarios) as well as applied in local-participatory context to explore solutions to local problems (Notten et al. 2003). It has neither beenwidely usedforproblemsrelatedtodisasterandclimate-relatedrisksnorappliedinforensics studies.Buildingonsubstantial forensicsworkundertakenintheAlliance,wetested a forensics approach forunderstandinganddealingwith the impacts brought about by theElNinoPhenomenon inPeru in2016/17 (seeFrenchandMechler2017). TheElNinoPhenomenon generally and particularly in Peru has brought about largedisaster impacts about theaffected. Impacts are recurrent andhighlyvariable, withacycleof7–14years.Otherhazards interactandrecentlyaso-calledcoastalEl NinohitPeruleadingtomajordevastation(Fig.17.13).Theforensicswork,building on other PERCand disaster forensics studies (Venkateswaran et al. 2015;Keating et al. 2016b), and utilising desk-based research and analysis, semi-structured and unstructured key-informant interviews, empirical risk analysis and riskmodelling, took the largeuncertaintyassociatedwithElNinoasapointofdeparture inorder to betterunderstandthehistoryandfutureevolutionofElNiñoimpactsandlinkedDRM efforts inPeru.Theresearchhasbeenbuildingonempiricallygroundedinsightsand 2seewww.floodresilience.net/solutions/collection/perc.