[07/25] Dr Ellen Robson (PDRA, IHRR) and Dr Peter McGowran (Research Associate, King’s College London) led the organisation of an interdisciplinary workshop that explored the intersections between roads, development and disaster resilience with 50 practitioners, policymakers, and physical and social scientists – a synthesis of the workshop discussions has now been published as a journal article in IJDRR.
Natural hazard-influenced disasters, sustainable development, and roads are closely intertwined. Governments and funding agencies worldwide are increasingly focused on delivering disaster-resilient road infrastructure. However, the multifaceted, ubiquitous, and contested nature of road networks means that making them resilient to disasters is a complex task. Efforts to build resilient roads generate trade-offs against other policy goals like climate resilience and sustainable development and always carry political implications. In this paper, we synthesise discussions that took place during a one-day hybrid workshop on the intersections between roads, development and disaster resilience with 50 practitioners, policymakers, and physical and social scientists from around the world with expertise in relevant fields. Two key themes emerged: (i) the political ecology of the resilience of road networks and (ii) the key players and politics surrounding road construction and maintenance. Through synthesising workshop discussions with contemporary literature, we present working definitions of disaster resilience for these two themes to help shape future interdisciplinary research on road disaster resilience. When thinking through the theme of political ecology, road disaster resilience is understood within the context of uneven power dynamics and the political work done by applying a resilience lens to the research objects in question. When thinking through key road players and politics, road disaster resilience is understood to emerge from the relationships between financers, knowledge holders, and those with ownership over the road. In synthesising key themes, we ultimately develop the concept of “roads-in-relation” as a framing device for future interdisciplinary road disaster resilience research that crosscuts these key themes.
The workshop was hosted by the Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience in May 2024, and organised by Dr Ellen Robson (Postdoctoral Research Associate, IHRR) and Dr Peter McGowran (Research Associate, King's College London).
Article:
Robson, E.B., McGowran, P., Ruszczyk, H.A., Malamud, B.D., Simpson, E., Densmore, A.L., Denton, N., Chapplow, N., Gurung, P., Hall, T.E., Harries, R., Jenkins, J., KC, A., Kotter, R., Kumar, A., Limbu, B., Milledge, D., Porter, G., Rosser, N., Taylor, F., Toll, D.G., Winter M.G., Woldearegay, K., 2025. Interdisciplinary perspectives on the intersections of roads, sustainable development, and disaster resilience. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, p.105691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijdrr.2025.105691
Photo credit
Figure 2, Robson et al, (2025)
Photo caption (including who is in the photo)
Key aspects that should be considered in developing a resilient road in the context of road players and politics that have emerged from this subsection.
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