ABSTRACT

ESA 2017

Exploring the network of actors contributing to mitigating flood risk in Lomma, Sweden

Urban flood risk is a big and growing concern in Sweden. Although much focus is placed on
rainfall, hydrology, and engineering conceptualizations of both consequences and solutions,
social research contributes to explaining and understanding risk and how actors perceive,
construct, and manage it together. This paper applies social network analysis to investigate
the network of actors in Hje river catchment area contributing to mitigating urban flood
risk in the town of Lomma in southern Sweden. By analysing representations of the social
network of individual respondents based on different types of professional dependencies, as
well as trust, influence and friendship, a number of interesting structural and relational
aspects emerge. Aspects that may have direct implications on how flood risk is managed,
now and for the future. This structural analysis is complemented with a more reputational
analysis of who the individual respondents consider having most influence over flood risk in
Lomma in general, regardless of direct dependencies to these actors or not. The study is
finalized during the spring of 2017, but early findings indicate a significant enviro-
organizational rift; a systemic discrepancy between the hydrological system of the rivers
catchment area causing floods under certain circumstances and how society is organised to
address this challenge.