Evolutionary systemic modelling of practices on flood risk

SummaryOver time since the prehistory, interactions with floods have undergone evolutionary transitions including aversion to flood risk, flood defence and flood risk management, each serving as a mindset or a paradigm. Historic data describing these interactions are used in this paper to “model” these transitions and to explain them. This is a new bottom-up modelling capability based on a set of postulates integrating: (i) systemic thinking where systems are effected by four types of feedback loops to be described in the paper, which include positive/negative feedback; and (ii) evolutionary thinking, where each feedback loop is associated with a “risk mindset.” These mindsets can undergo evolutionary transition from one to the next and the transition is largely driven by natural selection. After an evolutionary transition, lower mindsets do not necessarily disappear but can adapt and coexist with higher order loops. Based on the insight gained, the paper argues that (i) as the loops coexist pluralistically, systems increase in their complexity; (ii) there may be unexpected dynamic behaviours when a system is interacted with different types of feedback loops; and (iii) currently, these dynamic behaviours are overlooked, suggesting possible loopholes, bottlenecks or barriers and hence the motivation for this paper.

Research highlights
► Evolutionary/systemic thinking can model evolutionary transitions in risk practices.
► The gained vision focuses on risk complexity and pluralism with surprising foresight.
► The model uses natural selection as the architect and feedback loops as architecture.
► The loops emerge consequentially and serve as mindsets explaining the driving forces.
► The given postulates act as a “fact engine” for the model with a key role to entropy.