Home fires : risk, vulnerability, and diversity

Geography has travelled some distance in rethinking human–environment interactions in the context of ‘natural hazards’. In his appraisal ‘Geography’s Contribution to Understanding Hazards and Disasters’, Kendra (2007) neatly summarised conventional behavioural geography models about people’s decision-making with regard to locating themselves and their houses and businesses in hazard-prone environments. These models suggested that people made poor locational choices, exposing them to hazards, ‘based on imperfect knowledge of the nature, magnitude, and return period of extreme events or inaccurate assessments of their capacity to endure these events’ (Kendra, 2007, 17, referencing Kates 1971 and White 1973). Later work pointed to flaws in assuming alignment between knowledge and action; rather, a gap between risk perception and behaviour is unsurprising (Moran, 2011; Gaillard and Mercer, 2012). This themed issue pushes further still.