Community Risk Assessment: Connecting Technical Knowledge with Local and Indigenous Knowledge

Two general approaches have been observed in community risk assessment. Top-down community risk assessments are often driven by agencies on macro scales. Meanwhile, bottom-up approaches are often driven by communities at local scales, placing the people at risk at the centre of the risk assessment process. Top-down approaches typically rely on technical, scientific and data-driven methods, while bottom-up approaches are rich in contextual, local and Indigenous knowledge. It is very common to see more quantitative and technical assessments in the top-down approaches in contrast to more qualitative and contextually rich assessments in the bottom-up approaches. Although the individual use of both approaches is extensively observed in different community risk assessment frameworks, there is a research gap concerning the benefits of their potential integration.