Abstract:

In a world of increasingly complex and tightly coupled systems, hazard managers face new challenges of interconnecting hazards. Hazards associated with these risk systems cannot be managed in isolation. A plurality of actors each with their peculiar interests, abilities, and constraints engage in individual and coordinated actions in the context of multiple and sometimes overlapping political and institutional boundaries. This paper attempts to simplify and make sense of this complex risk environment by using the notion of a decision landscape. A decision landscape in a conceptual space to locate potential actions, implications of such actions, actors, purposes, resources, and scene. Using the example of hydraulic fracturing in the United Sates we suggest how a risk decision landscape can be structured and populated with information relevant to risk managers.