Modes of Uncertainty: Negotiating Flood Risk Between Engineers, Bureaucrats, and Publics

• In Event: Precision and Uncertainty in a World of Data - II

Abstract

In many areas of science, technology, and design, uncertainty is deemed problematic, something to be eliminated. For many scholars, the asymptotic pursuit of certainty is in fact one of the defining characteristics of modernity. On the contrary, this paper argues that uncertainty can be generative and contribute to deeper engagement with complexity and support the formation of new publics around contentious issues. These claims are based on two years of ethnographic observation of the science and politics of flood risk in Colorado, as well as design research that examines citizen interaction with expert knowledge about flooding in the region. I argue that the 100-year floodplain standard that inform maps produced by the United States National Floodplain Insurance Program represent a problematic form of closure of scientific understanding of flood hazard. In order to meet the requirements of the NFIP, this standard acts as a closure that conveys a certainty that the underlying science does not warrant, foreshortening dialogue on disaster risk and public understanding of flood hazard. I then explore opportunities afforded by design and science communications for resisting this closure and provoking public formation around a more engaged understanding of floods. Finally, I consider the ways in which some kinds of uncertainty about flood danger are structural effects of contemporary political economy, engineering expertise, and the exigencies of flood management bureaucracy in the United States. Through these arguments I expand the conceptual resources we can draw upon when engaging with the politics of uncertainty along the nature-culture divide.

Author

• Robert Soden