A Politics of Global Datasets and Models in Flood Risk Management

Momentum and interest have gathered around global flood risk datasets and models (GFMs). Such tools are often argued to be particularly useful in contexts where relevant data – such as stream flow and human settlement location – is sparse, inconsistent, or non-existent. As a relatively new technology, the technical limitations of GFMs – as specifically technical methodological challenges – have been quite well explored in existing literature. However, through engagement with literature, government policy documents and plans, and interviews with academic and commercial experts in Colombia, Ethiopia, India, Malaysia, and the UK, we show that their relevance and utility in reality cross-cut the technical, the political, and the social. We argue that GFMs risk becoming another means through which states and other powerful actors re-imagine floods as technical challenges, while they are at root political-economic dilemmas(cf. Ferguson, 1994). This is linked to the ways that such technologies advance, becoming increasingly computationally powerful and accurate, and to the mutually reinforcing roles they play in relation to various 'fantasy plans' produced by governmental and other agencies (Weinstein et al., 2019). By focussing on an extended case study in the Akaki Catchment, Ethiopia, we argue that such fantasy plans – like those blueprinting urban development – serve to buttress state power through the performance of stability and reliability, while they avoid effectively tackling, or may even exacerbate, the political-economic realities which drive unequitable and unsustainable development. Such forms of development are directly linked to increasing flood risk both locally and globally.