Modelling risk and risking models: The diffusive boundary between science and policy in volcanic risk management

- We conceptualise the science-policy interface as diffusive.
- We use a detailed example of pyroclastic flow models and risk assessments.
- We examine the role of qualitative uncertainties in risk management.

This article examines the science-policy interface in volcanic risk assessment. It analyses empirical data from research on Montserrat, where new volcanic risk assessment methodologies were pioneered. We discuss the ways in which these methods contributed towards the ordering of scientific advice in its geographical context, and we provide examples of the complex and overlapping topologies that are assembled in a volcanic eruption. In this case, the science-policy interface can be conceptualised as diffusive: both science and policy contain multiple overlapping networks of actors, objects and ideas that interact with one another through flows of responsibilities, attribution, identity and interpretation. Volcanic risk management involves negotiation of conceptual, relational and physical boundaries, and as a result requires the use of qualitative and quantitative methods across human and physical geography.