Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences

William Riebsame Travis

Research Interests

Travis’s teaching and research focus on human behavior in the environment, including the human dimensions of climate change, land use, and the interaction of people and ecosystems.

Current Research:The Catastrophe Effect - Extreme Events and Society

Social science theory struggles with extreme natural events: should we examine social responses as extensions of individual and collective behavior under “normal” conditions, or should we recognize a separate realm of behavior evoked by extremes and catastrophes? In many ways this parallels a debate in the natural sciences: are extremes simply the tails of well-known distributions, or are they manifestations of unique conditions or perhaps the tails of radically different distributions of natural phenomena? Human interaction with natural variability is highlighted by impacts of, and responses to, extreme events. This shows up, for example, in natural hazard insurance data. Colorado crop insurance premiums and payouts would roughly balance out over the 15 years of the current program if it weren’t for one extreme year: 2002 (Figure 1). One year also dominates the recent wildfire record (2006). Perhaps we should separate out a realm of extremes or catastrophes, and analyze those effects as a special population rather than as the extreme end of a continuum. This allows us to assess damage trends and social vulnerability to the more typical droughts or hurricanes, say, while recognizing that the rare, catastrophic event, such as the 1930s Dust Bowl or Hurricane Katrina, may yield quite different physical and social effects. That is, society may well become less sensitive to “typical” droughts and hurricanes through typical mitigations such as larger reservoirs and better building codes, but these adjustments are inevitably overwhelmed by the most extreme events, which we would call catastrophes. Somewhere in the continuum, we reach a point where additional investment in protection and control systems becomes markedly inefficient, perhaps unfeasible.

Are we becoming more or less vulnerable to climate hazards? Is it possible that adapting to particular hazard standards, such as 100-year floods, sets society up for truly catastrophic losses from events that surpass the standard? Does it always hold, as prescribed in many climate adaptation programs, that adapting better to the current climate, especially to its extremes, yields better adaptation to future climate change? For example, as urban water systems are adapted to drought, might they become more or less vulnerable to climate change? Is there a “levee effect,” whereby adjustment to frequent, lower-intensity hazards sets up the potential for truly catastrophic loss in rarer events? Is Colorado becoming more or less vulnerable to drought? How might we respond if global warming pushed the climate past a tipping point so that extreme, abrupt climate change occurred? These are some of the questions about extreme events and society that colleagues and I pursue at the CIRES Center for Science and Techology Policy Research.

Publications

Click here for a complete list of published works »

Honors and Awards

• Orton Family Foundation Fellow (2004-06): One year fellowship to student and write a book about changing land use patterns in the American West.
• Outstanding Public Service Award (1992): Federal Emergency Management Agency, Washington, DC: “For exemplary leadership, enthusiasm, and intellect in improving hazards reduction in the U.S.” Washington, DC.