A participatory foresight approach in disaster risk management: The multi-risk storylines

High levels of uncertainty and emergent phenomena characterise disaster risk management. Fostering knowledge exchange between social actors with different capital, such as interdisciplinary technical-scientific experts, multi-level authorities and civil society, is therefore essential. In the European policy arena, the use of participatory foresight methods aimed at scenario building has become established to facilitate this exchange. However, designing and implementing such methods is still experimental and requires modeling and evaluation in the context of application. The article presents a case study of Risk Storylines (RS), a participatory scenario building technique developed by an interdisciplinary research team, involving dozens of stakeholders from two different territorial areas, a metropolitan and an inland area, and integrating quantitative and qualitative research techniques. The article describes the model elaboration phases, and reports the results obtained from the experimentation in relation to the management of a multi-hazard event characterised by intense precipitation compounded with a heatwave.