Floodplain Inhabitation: A Socio-Spatial Resilience Network

Victoria University of Wellington 2012

The inadequacy of current approaches to managing floodplain inhabitation was highlighted in the 2010-11 Queensland, northern New South Wales and Victorian floods; the most costly floods in Australia’s history. Despite technological advancements and the prevalence of flood mitigation infrastructure, floods continue to have widespread adverse physical, social, economic, and emotional impacts. This situation is mirrored internationally and is anticipated to worsen as scientists predict an increase in the severity and prevalence of natural disasters such as flooding. In response to this, management of floodplain inhabitation must shift from flood prevention to adaptation. Adaptation is a key term in ecological resilience, defined as the capacity of a system to adapt and persist in the face of disturbance (Holling 1976). Hendstra et al (2004) suggests that in the context of disaster-resilient cities, resilience can be defined as the “capacity to adapt to stress from hazards and the ability to recover quickly from their impacts” (Henstra, Kovacs, McBean, & Sweeting, 2004, p. 5). Analysis of ecosystems reveals that interdependence across scales, variety, redundancy, adaptability and feedback are the key resilience principles enabling the system to adapt and maintain stability during flooding. At present there is a sparsity of literature exploring spatial resilience approaches to improving floodplain inhabitation. Whilst amphibious approaches improve individual resilience, there is a lack of innovative solutions to improve community and city resilience to flooding. Resilience approaches have the potential to reduce safety concerns, financial losses and the emotional stress associated with residing on Australian floodplains. Such approaches acknowledge the interconnected nature of riverine floodplains and their inhabitants. However resilience principles need to be given a physical spatial function within specific social contexts. Architecture provides a platform to test new

Floodplain; Inhabitation; Resilience; Text; Master's

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