The development of integrative models and concepts that link the different phases of risk governance from an interdisciplinary perspective can be interpreted as the overall objective for integrative approaches to risk governance. Therefore the MIDIR project has developed a “multidimensional integrative risk resilience and governance concept” in order to overbear the mentioned tendency to insularity between disciplines, to find a proper way to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity and to create resilient communities. It is based on a comprehensive investigation on the state-of-art on knowledge and methodologies applied for risk governance, having analysed existing risk governance concepts with a special focus on Europe and some input for non-European situations.
The MIDIR approach is a comprehensive risk governance concept which aims at a broad and active involvement of decision-makers at the relevant political and administrative levels and/or of stakeholders. In addition it offers a better understanding and acceptance of research by society and vice versa bringing the legitimate interests of society and single stakeholders into research and decision-making. The concept is supported by a tool that is able to monitor the performance of a risk governance process.
The concept consists of:
- an “indicator system” as a methodological concept that brings together the state-of-art in risk governance concepts with methodological and procedural needs, identified by those who are close to the daily practice in risk communication, with:
- Part A: Procedural and methodological aspects, applicable for every risk setting
- Part B: Context related aspects, to be defined individually for every risk setting. For this phase it is necessary to develop additional indicators by the responsible authorities according to their needs, circumstances, priority risks, populations, target groups etc.
- an “interest analysis” being a practical method for preparing stakeholder involvement processes.
The first phase of the MIDIR project concentrated on procedural and methodological aspects in a risk governance process, which are applicable for every risk setting (Part A). It made use of commonly accepted dynamic indicators (see Wanczura 2007) which allowed an adaptation depending on the needs of the responsible institution of a specific risk governance process. Furthermore it can be used as a basis for the elaboration or generation of Part B since basic features of Part A as e.g. stakeholder involvement have to be considered as well when defining context related indicators in Part B. Consequently both parts are interdependent and implemented simultaneously and strictly connected to each other. The practical application of the process was the focus of the case studies.