Dobbie Meredith Frances, Brown Rebekah Ruth
CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, Monash Water for Liveability, and School of Geography and Environmental Science, Monash University, Wellington Road, Clayton, Victoria 3800, Australia.
Risk Anal. 2014 Feb;34(2):294-308. doi: 10.1111/risa.12100. Epub 2013 Aug 5.
Sustainable urban water systems are likely to be hybrids of centralized and decentralized infrastructure, managed as an integrated system in water-sensitive cities. The technology for many of these systems is available. However, social and institutional barriers, which can be understood as deeply embedded risk perceptions, have impeded their implementation. Risk perceptions within the water sector are often unrecognized or unacknowledged, despite their role in risk management generally in informing value judgments and specifically in ranking risks to achieve management objectives. There has been very little examination of the role of these risk perceptions in advancing more sustainable water supply management through the adoption of alternative sources. To address this gap, this article presents a framework that can be used as a tool for understanding risk perceptions. The framework is built on the relational theory of risk and presents the range of human phenomena that might influence the perception of an "object at risk" in relation to a "risk object." It has been synthesized from a critical review of theoretical, conceptual, and empirical studies of perception broadly and risk perception specifically, and interpreted in relation to water practitioners. For a water practitioner, the risk object might be an alternative water system, a component, a process, or a technology, and the object at risk could be public or environmental health, profitability, or professional reputation. This framework has two important functions: to allow practitioners to understand their own and others' risk perceptions, which might differ, and to inform further empirical research.
可持续城市供水系统可能是集中式和分散式基础设施的混合体，在对水敏感的城市中作为一个综合系统进行管理。许多这类系统的技术已经具备。然而，社会和制度障碍，可被理解为根深蒂固的风险认知，阻碍了它们的实施。尽管水行业内的风险认知在一般风险管理中对形成价值判断、特别是在对风险进行排序以实现管理目标方面发挥着作用，但往往未被认识或承认。对于通过采用替代水源推进更可持续的供水管理而言，这些风险认知所起的作用几乎没有得到考察。为填补这一空白，本文提出了一个可作为理解风险认知工具的框架。该框架基于风险的关系理论，呈现了一系列可能影响与“风险对象”相关的“受风险影响对象”认知的人类现象。它是从对广泛的感知理论、概念和实证研究，特别是风险认知的批判性综述中综合而来，并结合水行业从业者进行了解读。对于水行业从业者来说，风险对象可能是替代供水系统、一个组件、一个流程或一项技术，而受风险影响对象可能是公众或环境健康、盈利能力或职业声誉。这个框架有两个重要功能：让从业者理解他们自己以及他人可能不同的风险认知，并为进一步的实证研究提供信息。
