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Participatory action research can improve scientific knowledge and community capacity to address disaster resilience and environmental justice. Evidence from the literature suggests that resident participation enhances assessment of environmental risks, raises awareness and empowers residents to fight for equitable distribution of hazard and climate risk adaptations. Yet, risk assessment and urban planning processes still frequently operate within expertise-driven groups without significant community engagement. Such fragmentation results in part from a lack of appreciation for community expertise in built environment adaptations and educational tools to support resident involvement in the often technical built environment planning processes.

A participatory research and place-based education project was developed that enhanced co-learning between residents and researchers while collecting and analyzing local data on flood resilience in the built environment. Five research activities constitute the curriculum of resilience education on stormwater infrastructure: establishment of partnership agreement/memorandum of understanding, participatory GIS to identify flooding issues, water quality testing and health survey, stormwater infrastructure assessment and urban/landscape design. Partners included high school and college students, residents and environmental justice organizations.

Outcomes include a stakeholder-approved infrastructure assessment smartphone application, neighborhood maps of drainage issues, a report of water containments and neighborhood-scaled green infrastructure provisions and growth plans. Findings indicate that participatory research positively contributed to resilience knowledge of participants.

This paper outlines an interdisciplinary pedagogical strategy for resilience planning that engages residents to assess and monitor the performance of stormwater infrastructure and create resilience plans. The paper also discusses challenges and opportunities for similar participatory projects.

This paper aims to present a new master’s programme for promoting energy access and energy efficiency in Southern Africa.

A transdisciplinary approach called “participatory integrated assessment of energy systems” (PARTICIPIA) was used for the development of the curriculum. This approach is based on the two emerging fields of “multi-scale integrated assessment” and “science for governance”, which bring innovative concepts and methods.

The application of the PARTICIPIA methodology to three case studies reveals that the proposed transdisciplinary approach could support energy and development policies in the region. The implementation of the PARTICIPIA curriculum in three higher education institutions reveals its ability to respond to the needs of specific contexts and its connection with existing higher education programmes.

Considering energy issues from a transdisciplinary approach in higher education is absolutely critical because such a holistic view cannot be achieved through engineering curricula. Deliberate and greater efforts should be made to integrate methods from “multi-scale integrated assessment” and “science for governance” in higher education curricula to train a new breed of modern-day energy planners in charge of coming up with solutions that are shared by all relevant stakeholders.

This paper presents an innovative higher education curriculum in terms of the attention given to energy access and energy efficiency that affect the southern Africa region and the nature of the methodology adopted to face these issues.

Risk assessments are the very basis on which planning and implementation are carried out. In the context of urban risk management, the assessment processes are complex to understand as they involve multi-sectoral parameters. Many of the issues involved are of technical nature, but this also requires focus on the principles behind the assessment process including participatory assessment tools.

Action planning is a participatory, short-term, visible, output-oriented process that enables urban community groups to plan the development of risk reduction actions in their locality and to lead the implementation of the action plans.

There are three kinds of actions that emerge from an action planning process: (i) those that can be implemented by the community groups themselves, (ii) those that need some external help for implementation, and (iii) those that can only be implemented by specialized agencies from outside the community. Implementation management processes thus need to look at how internal systems can be established to operationalize self-action, and to coordinate external interventions.

Benchmarking ecosystem conditions is a prerequisite to any investigation of ecological systems. It provides a description or better understanding of the system under study. This chapter discusses ecological indicators and the conceptual approaches to ecosystem assessment. It introduces a case study on participatory ecosystem resilience assessment in Infanta, Philippines.

The purpose of this paper is to set out a structured meta‐methodology, named DIODE, for the ethical assessment of new and emerging technologies. DIODE has been designed by a mixture of academics, governmental people and commercial practitioners. It is designed to help diverse organisations and individuals conduct ethical assessments of new and emerging technologies.

A framework discussion paper was developed for consultation to ensure that DIODE addresses fundamental ethical concerns, has appropriate and manageable scope and is comprehensive in its ethical compass. The resulting DIODE meta‐methodology uses flowcharts and templates, encompassing the use of diverse tools and techniques.

There are two different angles for the ethical assessment of new technologies; a strategic/abstract angle and a project/application specific angle. DIODE includes two channels to accommodate this distinction. Early stage testing yielded positive feedback and mostly favourable comment. Additional guidance materials are being developed in response to the feedback.

Without training and guidance, it is difficult for technologists to take ethical concerns into account during the development and deployment of new technologies. DIODE can provide that training and guidance through a practical meta‐methodology which should help ICT professionals, policy makers and academics.

There is very little structured methodology material available on the ethical assessment of new technologies. The depth and sophistication contained in DIODE is therefore believed to be unique. DIODE provides practical help while remaining rooted in the philosophical and theoretical concepts of ethics.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the assessment of poverty/deprivation using different conceptions of this phenomenon including the traditional money‐metric measure and different forms of multidimensional constructs.

The data were drawn from a household survey conducted in Nsukka, Nigeria. Interviewer‐administered questionnaires were used in data collection from about 410 households across urban and rural localities. The counting and FGT methodologies were used to assess impoverishment, while regression analyses were used to assess the determinants of deprivation across different constructs.

Between 70 per cent and 78 per cent of the study population were identified as poor/deprived. However, more than 11 per cent of those living on less than USD1.25/day were classified as non‐poor using different measures of multidimensional poverty. Similarly, more than 62 per cent of individuals who live on more than 1.25USD/day (i.e. non‐poor) are classified as poor using different measures of multidimensional deprivation. There is some level of correlation between measures, some inevitably stronger than others. The major determinants of deprivation across the various constructs of deprivation include large family size, low level of education, poor employment, rural location, and poor health.

This paper uses novel datasets that incorporate variables relating to the capability approach in understanding deprivation. Specifically, it analyses the so‐called missing dimensions of poverty. It also applies a new methodology for the assessment of impoverishment and deprivation. It highlights the importance of the capability approach in explaining poverty.

The recent shift in the Philippine Government’s emphasis from response to a more proactive approach came with the recognition that different stakeholders play important roles in the governance of disaster risk. The purpose of this paper is to look beyond the question as to whether all stakeholders are involved in disaster risk management planning and examines the extent by which the narratives of risk of actors at the margins shape how risk is framed in municipal DRM planning in Antique, Philippines.

This paper is based on a field study carried out in San Jose de Buenavista, Antique Province, Philippines. Data were gathered through key informant interviews and focus group discussions as well as a review of archival records and documents.

The narratives of CSOs and communities, which revolve around livelihoods and community life are conspicuously absent from the plans whereas that of government actors occupy a central position in the risk discourse. The study highlights the power-saturated process of defining and addressing risk to disasters, where knowledge is intimately linked to power as some voices shape plans and policies, whereas, others are excluded because their knowledge is socially constructed as less reliable and therefore irrelevant.

There is a dearth of studies that examine disaster risk as social constructions in the context of planning in the Philippines and in other disaster-prone countries.

Urbanization is a complex dynamic process playing out over multiple scales of space and time. It is both a social phenomenon and a physical transformation of landscape that is now clearly at the forefront of defining current and future trends of development. The key challenge for effective urban risk reduction and mitigation will be to identify the points of intersection for urban vulnerability and risk reduction in order to localize and contextualize the components, so that it can be customized to the unique needs of each urban area. This requires a critical revisit to the way we look at cities and urban areas, and is a useful starting point to contextualize the urban risk management components presented earlier. Taken together these points of intersection put cities in a unique position to generate both the problem and the solution. The concentration of politico-economic decision-making processes in cities of Asia, particularly capital mega cities, provide greater opportunities to meet the urban vulnerability challenge. For effective urban risk reduction, there is a need to strike a balance between natural and built environments and between ecological and economic objectives.

In the scientific field of climate change adaptation (CCA), the focus on cities has grown steadily in recent years. Increasing population figures especially in developing countries, and overall in cities, demonstrate a key challenge for institutions, communities, economies, and the natural environment to find appropriate solutions to overcome this problem (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC], 2007). Rapid urbanization is just one of the key issues that cities have to deal with; another main challenge is how to manage the impacts from climate change like increasing numbers of natural hazards that are resulting in more frequent and intense disasters (EM-Dat, 2009; Munich Re Group, 2009).

This paper analyses the justification of technological choices and options in the context of nuclear energy policy. We argue that “society” increasingly demands a justification with regard to the level of uncertainty and inequality a certain technological choice induces. We aim to demonstrate that policy makers in fact do address these issues, but depending on how they define the problem, this is done in a more explicit (overt) or implicit (covert) way.

First, the changing context with regard to the justification of technological choices is briefly sketched. We draw the attention to the link between the way a certain (energy) policy problem is defined, and the way the framework for political decision‐making is set up in response to the problem. In order to clarify this observation, we make use of a scheme derived from policy sciences, mapping out policy problems in two dimensions: the (lack of) certainty concerning the kinds of knowledge a problem may require, and the (lack of) consensus on relevant values (i.e. “the common good”, “basic rights”, etc.). Each type of policy problem requires a distinct solution strategy. A so‐called Type III‐error occurs when the wrong problem is solved by employing a strategy which does not apply to the problem at hand. In that case, political theory predicts strategic behavior in order to actively suppress or blur value differences. The Belgian decision to phase out nuclear power is used as a case study to illustrate some of the theoretical implications of the scheme.

Several Type III‐errors could be demonstrated in the case of the Belgian phase out. In this case, social learning was severely hampered by different methodological approaches; lack of data; different perceptions of relevant time scales; different framing of the problem; institutional barriers; lack of communication; strategic use of scientific assessments by different stakeholders; and insufficient knowledge of scientific assessments.

The paper aims to broaden the debate on energy policy outside the boundaries of institutional decision‐making. We conclude with some practical recommendations for future energy policy, regarding problem structuring, defining possible options, goal and strategy formulation and monitoring of choices.