ABSTRACT
According to risk management theory, risk can be classified as ‘static’ or ‘dynamic’, depending on risk variability (Yuan 2007). Since the first category usually refers to pure risk, it has also been described as ‘physical’. The second category is strongly associated with the ‘social risks’ that Beck (1992) describes in his risk society theory. If one only took environmental factors into consideration, floods might be placed in the static risk category, but in the context of modern society, floods, earthquakes and other natural disasters are components of complex interactions among the natural environment, political ecology and social structure. Risk management policies have traditionally over-emphasized the impact of technology on risk management; governments in post-industrialized societies tend to neglect disaster risk complexity and variability (Yeh and Chen 2007, Yodmani 2001).
