Journal of Environmental Planning and Management

ISSN: 0964-0568 (Print) 1360-0559 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjep20

Multi-level network governance of disaster risks:

the case of the Metropolitan Region of the Aburra
Valley (Medellin, Colombia)

Klaus Frey & Daniel Ricardo Calderón Ramírez

To cite this article: Klaus Frey & Daniel Ricardo Calderón Ramírez (2019) Multi-level
network governance of disaster risks: the case of the Metropolitan Region of the Aburra Valley
(Medellin, Colombia), Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 62:3, 424-445, DOI:
10.1080/09640568.2018.1470968

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2018.1470968

Published online: 04 Jun 2018.

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Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 2019
Vol. 62, No. 3, 424–445, https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2018.1470968

Multi-level network governance of disaster risks: the case of the

Metropolitan Region of the Aburra Valley (Medellin, Colombia)
Klaus Frey * and Daniel Ricardo Calder
on Ram
ırez

Centro de Engenharia Modelagem e Ciencias Sociais Aplicadas – Public Policy, UFABC,

Universidade Federal Do ABC, S~ao Paulo, Brazil

(Received 19 July 2017; final version received 24 April 2018)

Cities have increasingly been confronted with disasters, ranging from earthquakes and
storms to floods and landslides. Traditional technocratic top-down approaches have
proved inadequate to face disaster risks in urban agglomerations. Thus, expectations
have risen that through multi-level governance, metropolitan regions could become
more resilient by joining forces across scales and sectors, enabling them to implement
adaptation strategies collectively. Under the leadership of the city of Medellin and
integrated within the national risk governance system of Colombia, such a governance
arrangement has been established in the Metropolitan Area of the Aburra Valley.
Applying social network analysis, this paper analyses the institutional relationships
within the multi-level risk governance network Red Riesgos. It demonstrates that the
effectiveness of multi-level disaster risk governance networks depends primarily on
the protagonist role of local governments and on their abilities to involve local
communities and citizens and to interact constantly with higher-level authorities in the
implementation process.
Keywords: disaster risks; multi-level governance; resilience; adaptation; Colombia

1. Introduction
In parallel with the growing importance of climate change and global warming on the
global political agenda and the increase in devastating climate disasters in various parts
of the world, clearly demonstrating the human conditionality of these supposedly
‘natural’ disasters, research on disaster risk management has been redirected from a
mainly biophysical approach to the phenomenon, towards a more complex systemic
approach where relationships between different technical, political and social variables,
stretching across multiple scales of time and space, are recognized. This new approach,
the product of different socially constructed visions of the phenomenon, allows for
analysing previously neglected risk characteristics related to the complexity, uncertainty
and ambiguity of nature, society and politics. Therefore, broader, systemic perspectives
and new strategies to manage disaster risks collaboratively, continuously and responsibly
are being generated (Van Asselt and Renn 2011; Van der Heijden 2014; Boyd and Juhola
2015; Pelling, O’Brien, and Matyas 2015; Howes et al. 2015; Huitema et al. 2016;
Wolfram 2016; Beunen, Patterson, and van Assche 2017; Termeer, Dewulf, and
Biesbroek 2017).
As risks have become more and more systemic, corresponding perspectives are
needed in both research and governance in order to overcome traditional views

*Corresponding author. E-mail: klaus.frey@ufabc.edu.br

Ó 2018 Newcastle University

 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 425

considering risks as simple linear equations of probabilities and effects, by focusing

instead on the complexity of social and environmental interdependencies (Van Asselt and
Renn 2011, 436). As a result of international agreements such as the Hyogo Framework
for Action in the sphere of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster
Reduction (UNISDR, 2016) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction,
adopted in 2015 (Nemakonde and Van Niekerk, 2017, 362), climate change adaptation
strategies within multi-level governance agreements have become increasingly part of the
risk reduction strategies.
In the context of climate change, the adoption of a complex systemic perspective,
highlighting first and foremost interdependencies and interactivities, is a central cornerstone
of current concepts of risk management, tackling social-ecological systems from a resilience
and/or adaptation perspective (Folke et al. 2005; Adger et al. 2005; Jones and Faas 2017a,
b). Hence, this represents a particular governance challenge for cities in large metropolitan
regions, as unilateral local governmental strategies have proved inadequate to tackle
complex cross-jurisdictional problems such as climate change and disaster risks (Ayers
2009; World Bank 2001; Huitema et al. 2016; van der Heijden et al. 2018). Accordingly,
cities have to cooperate with neighbouring local authorities, with higher-level governmental
authorities, and finally with civil society organizations and local communities, in order to
arrive at sufficiently complex, flexible and therefore resilient institutional structures.
Characterized by high territorial interdependencies and a general imbalance
concerning the regional distribution of administrative and technical capacities, in the
usually monocentric metropolitan regions prevailing in Latin America (Lefevre 2005)
and the developing world in general, particular responsibility lies with the central cities
regarding the promotion of effective risk governance on a regional scale. As we lack
knowledge on how central cities successfully promote inter-municipal cooperation in this
field, “about how and why these choices are made in practice” (Huitema et al. 2016), this
research analyses how, under the guidance of the provincial capital Medellin, a
cooperative risk governance regime – Red Riesgos – was implemented in the
Metropolitan Area of the Aburra Valley (MAAV). Focus is on the promotion of an
institutional structure supporting territorial resilience and adaptation capacities to better
face the multiple challenges related to climate change.
The case of the Aburra Valley in Colombia is worth studying, first, because Colombia
is internationally recognized as a model for an effectively structured national risk policy
in Latin America (Banco Mundial 2012); and second, because the region, with Medellin
as its main city, is at the forefront of the new regionalism movement which has emerged
in Colombia (Frey 2012), as in many other countries/regions as a basically economically
motivated movement considering the city region as being a functional economic space
and generative force in contemporary globalized capitalism (Frey 2018), whereas risk
management only recently entered the regional agenda of the Aburra Valley.
Although the MAAV features long-standing inter-municipal cooperation for
economic and territorial development of the region, to reduce vulnerability and
exposition to disaster risk has been one of the most difficult challenges in the regional
policy agenda due to the lack of integrated environmental management and planning
(L
opez Pel
aez 2012). Studies of the Universidad EAFIT of Medellin have registered
several natural events followed by great disasters in the last 100 years and they have
become more numerous and serious in the last 20 years. During this period, in the city of
Medellin alone, landslides have left a total of 1,264 casualties, flash floods 265 and
overbank flooding 122 deaths. 29,174 households are considered as being located in
high-risk areas (Mejia and Hermelin 2012, 81).
426 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

The vulnerability of the city region has also increased significantly due to the armed
conflict that Colombia suffered starting in the 1960s, which generated a massive
displacement of people from the rural conflict zones to the different cities of the MAAV.
According to government records, the city of Medellin alone has received 73,558 people
who settled in the periphery of the city between 2004 and 2008, most of them in high-risk
zones (L
opez Pel
aez 2012, 327).
In 2004, the MAAV environmental department proposed a risk management program
as part of the Metropolitan Development Plan: the Metropolis Project 2002–2020. This
plan includes measures related to environmental protection and disaster risk and hazard
prevention, providing technical assistance to the municipalities of the MAAV and paving
the way for the establishment of the Metropolitan Network of Disaster Prevention and
Response (Mejia and Hermelin 2012, 85–86).
As the intended organization of this regional cooperation project follows the network
approach, we decided to use social network analysis (SNA) in order to map and analyse
the roles and relationships of key actors in the MAAV and illustrate Medellin’s
protagonist role in the implementation of the regional risk governance regime.
It has proved to be an analytical tool suitable for gaining valuable insights into the
ways that complex and dynamic public challenges can be successfully addressed by
institutional design and political protagonist participation. In the light of the rapidly
growing need for climate change adaptation, it is troubling that SNA has not yet seen
much application in disaster risk management (for an exception see: Jones and Faas
2017b). As we explain in the sections that follow, it is particularly important to
understand and manage the interrelationships between technical, political and social
variables when preparing for, adapting and responding to climate change-related
disasters.
The article is structured in four sections. Second, it addresses the frameworks of
adaptive governance and resilience and
their contribution towards understanding
contemporary approaches to risk management. Third, it examines the concepts of social
capital and social networks and their potential contribution to multi-level governance in
the case of risk management. Fourth, the usage of SNA for the analysis of disaster risk
management is briefly explained and then applied to the analysis of the multi-level risk
governance network Red Riesgos in the fifth section. In the final conclusions, the progress
made and difficulties encountered in establishing a multi-level network governance for
disaster risks are discussed and the contribution of SNA is critically evaluated.

2. Resilience and adaptation in multi-level institutional settings

During recent decades, perceptions have changed regarding how to tackle disaster risks,
insofar as the state is no longer considered to be the only possible respondent to hazards
and incidents involving environmental catastrophes (for a recent review of urban
resilience conceptualisations, see Sanchez, van der Heijden, and Osmond 2018). The
notion of disaster as a merely natural event has increasingly given way to the recognition
of risk generation as a result of socioeconomic processes preceding disasters (Gellert de
Pinto 2012, 13). As O’Keefe, Westgate, and Wisner (1976, 566) already stressed 40 years
ago: “Without people there is no disaster.” Thus, little by little, general awareness has
arisen concerning the centrality of vulnerability conditions, the resilience properties of
society and its capacity to adapt to changing risks, paying attention simultaneously to the
physical and the societal systems (Veyret 2013; Lampis 2013; Lavell 2011; Van Herk
et al. 2015).
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 427

From a social constructivist perspective on social vulnerability to disaster risks,

processes of adaptation and societal resilience are crucial concepts for understanding
contemporary approaches to risk management, their achievements and limitations. In
accordance with Lei et al. (2014, 610) “vulnerability, adaptation and resilience are all
integrated concepts to characterize and understand how the system responds to and copes
with changes.” In studies such as those carried out by Adger et al. (2005) on social-
ecological resilience and by Folke et al. (2005) on adaptive governance of social-
ecological systems, those fundamentals are conceived as being strongly intertwined.
For Adger et al. (2005, 1036) “resilience reflects the degree to which a complex
adaptive system is capable of self-organization (…) and the degree to which the system
can build capacity for learning and adaptation”, being therefore dependent on factors
such as culture, identity, community cohesion and a proper sense of place (Adger et al.
2013, 112). Adaptation, according to Folke et al. (2005, 448), “relies on the collaboration
of a diverse set of stakeholders, operating at different levels, often through networks from
local users to municipalities, to regional and national organizations, and also to
international bodies.” These definitions clearly show, on the one hand, the mutual
dependency of resilience and adaptation and, on the other, that resilience calls for
adaptational governance processes at the local and regional levels, considering the
different territorial contexts.
That is why the dimension of scale and cross-scale dynamics has become essential in
order to gain an adequate understanding of the complexity of those phenomena and to
think about possible solutions, above all in the case of threats associated with global
environmental change (Cash and Moser 2000). Particularly in disaster risk management,
where local or localized concerns are primarily at stake, multiple stakeholders assume a
growing role in defining vulnerability problems and finding possible solutions. Attention
is increasingly being paid “to this level of analysis, while simultaneously linking to other
places and scales of analysis” (Turner et al. 2003, 8076).
In view of the general complexity inherent to disaster risk governance, there are high
expectations that, by means of institutional design, the necessary practices of
cooperation, coordination, and trust-building across sectors and scales could be
engendered, bringing together the different stakeholders, with their considerably diverse
interests and sometimes divergent perceptions of the (potential) risks, in favour of
collective action (Van Asselt and Renn 2011).
Thus, emphasis is given to the promotion of polycentric institutional arrangements
(Folke et al. 2005) or multi-level social networks (Adger et al. 2005) conceived for
connecting scales, places and sectors (van der Heijden et al. 2018). The principle of
organizational and institutional flexibility ought to ensure the mobilization of social
capital and, in that way, provide the input of all relevant stakeholders, address the
diversity of societal demands, and cope effectively with vulnerabilities and uncertainties.
Thus, disaster risk management can be considered an emblematic case of governance,
described in the respective literature as dealing with “phenomena that are hybrid and
multijurisdictional with plural stakeholders who come together in networks” (Bevir 2011,
2). Besides the tendency of network building, “informal spheres of authority” often
prevail, highlighting the idea of “governance beyond government” (Levi-Faur 2012, 6),
involving a kind of diffusion of the political aspect to the spheres of civil society and the
private sector.
Disaster risk governance is therefore, first and foremost, a political challenge,
involving high demands and governance abilities concerning the adjustment and
confrontation of interests and values. Adaptation strategies are part of a politically driven
428 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

development process and can be envisaged “as a constituent part of ongoing and
contested development trajectories” (Pelling, O’Brien, and Matyas 2015, 125). Yet, at the
same time, they are a huge scientific challenge insofar as we are dealing with
controversial knowledge with respect to the evaluation of risk properties and their
implications (Renn and Klinke 2013). It requires a comprehension of the complexity of
the territory as a socio-ecological system in order to render possible a better
understanding of the relationships between socio-political processes, patterns of natural
resource appropriation and the supporting ecosystems. As a consequence, in disaster risk
governance, knowledge generation has to go hand in hand with political intermediation,
insofar as a wide range of actors with their specific perceptions, appreciations, knowledge
backgrounds and political interests have to be engaged in the production of vulnerability
analyses, risk assessments and decision-making processes.
As outlined in this section, effective institutional design is crucial to obtain
governance practices based on the principles of resilience and adaptation, able to cope
with such complex and thorny issues as is the case with disaster risks. In order to verify
progress and difficulties in metropolitan risk governance, as proposed in this paper, we
need intermediate concepts that will allow us to identify how institutional arrangements
could contribute to enhanced resilience and adaptation capacities. Thus, in the following
section we focus on social capital and networks as, from our theoretical assumption, it is
institutional arrangements that establish, promote or shape networks and, hence, social
capital, resulting in enhanced resilience and adaptation capacities.

3. Social capital, networks and multi-level risk governance

Social capital and networks have been conceived as sociological concepts, highlighting
the importance of norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness for strengthening
interpersonal relationships and social structures, thereby facilitating “coordination and
cooperation for mutual benefit” (Putnam 1995). However, reciprocity and trustworthiness
are not only seen as a precondition for network building and collective social action, at
the same time social networks are supposed to strengthen exactly these social qualities
(Putnam 2001). “Supporters of this new concept believe that the level of trust, social
norms and networks can be measured and a high accumulation of such capital contributes
significantly to social, political and even economic performance, for better or worse”
(Nakagawa and Shaw 2004, 2).Therefore, it is not surprising that these concepts have
been assimilated by the literature on risk management addressing how to engage people
and institutions in collectively facing disaster risks, and have become an integral part of
theories of adaptive management in the context of environmental risks. Adger (2003) and
Folke et al. (2005) consider social capital the necessary ‘glue’ for adaptive and resilient
capacity, particularly in dealing with unforeseen and periodic hazardous events, while for
Wolf et al. (2010, 44) “strong social networks have been said to support individuals and
collective initiatives of adaptation and enhance resilience.”
Social capital and networks comprise an individual, or interpersonal, as well as a
collective, institutional dimension, both being extremely significant for facing disaster
risks. Strong trustworthy interpersonal relationships are fundamental at the community
level, whereas social capital-friendly institutions (Putnam 2001, 414) are crucial for
intergovernmental cooperation.
At the community level, the inward-looking bonding function of social capital
“connect[s] people who share similar demographic characteristics” (World Bank 2001,
128) and turns out to be essential, enhancing these communities’ capacity to act
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 429

collectively based on “undergirding specific reciprocity and mobilizing solidarity”

(Putnam 2001, 22). Effective cooperation across different scales and sectors, by contrast,
requires outward-looking bridging networks, due to the need to establish “linkage(s) to
external assets and for information diffusion” (Putnam 2001, 22). These horizontal
connections, however, mainly occur between “people with broadly comparable economic
status and political power” (World Bank 2001, 128).
Finally, the so-called “linking social capital”, defined by the World Bank (2001, 128)
as “vertical ties between poor people and people in positions of influence in formal
organizations”, aims at strengthening the relational ties between community and public
agencies, with civil society leaders playing an important enabling role. Therefore, linking
social capital turns out to be critical “to eliminate vulnerability of livelihood and make a
safer and sustainable environment” (Nakagawa and Shaw 2004, 10).
So if we think about the possible role of the state and of public policies in fostering
social capital, and thus mobilizing civil society for concrete public action and the
promotion of public goods, central importance has to be attached to the “institutional
design variable” (Lowndes and Wilson 2001, 641), which “plays an important role in
determining whether groups of citizens are able to gain access to decision-making,
whether decision-makers have a capacity to respond, and whether certain groups are
privileged over others in terms of the influence they exert.”
Consequently, institutional design is crucial for organizing cooperation and
coordination practices in a way that social capital can flourish and contribute to enhanced
governance performance, particularly in the context of wicked, scale-transcending
problems such as those in risk management, where multi-level governance approaches
are required due to the decreasing “ability of national level state institutions to control the
policymaking process” (Betsill and Bulkeley 2006, 154). The structuring of multi-level
governance arrangements seems, therefore, a promising and, at the same time, imperative
strategy to enhance governmental efficiency by resorting to network-enhanced social
capital.
In view of climate change and its expected impacts on cities, there is a need for multi-
scalar collaboration between different governmental agendas in order to bring forward
adaptation and resilience strategies. By sharing responsibilities, multi-level governance
might contribute to the elimination of contradictions and tensions between different
policies, thereby ensuring efficient use of scarce resources (Howes et al. 2015, 771).
Multi-level governance distinguishes the vertical or hierarchical dimension of
governance, consisting of vertical tiers and interaction, from the horizontal dimension,
determined by inter-sector cooperation, and relationships with extra-governmental actors.
In the case of risk management, the vertical dimension primarily refers to the decision-
making process and the horizontal dimension to the more technical aspects of risk
management (Corfee-Morlot et al. 2011; Betsill and Bulkeley 2006).
Thus, networks may reveal a process of state rescaling, promoting new coordination
patterns between different scales, from the global to the local, as well as between the
state and civil society actors or citizens with the objective of enhancing state capacity
(Swyngedouw 2004; Brenner 2003) or improving conditions of sustainability (Lawhon
and Patel 2013).
The efficacy of policy networks depends on relationships of interdependence and
trust, on mutually agreed and, hence, democratically legitimized institutions, and their
ability to provide information, create knowledge and develop commonly accepted norms
(Betsill and Bulkeley 2004). The amount of social capital is thus reflected in the density
of networks and information flows, as it facilitates the overcoming of problems
430 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

Figure 1. Influences and relationships in a multilevel risk governance regime.

associated with heterogeneity by reducing transaction costs (Paavolaa and Adger 2005,
363).
Figure 1 summarises the complex influences and relationships to be taken into
account in multi-level risk governance regimes. It is important to recognize that the
institutional design does not only contribute to network building and the mobilization of
social capital, augmenting adaptation capacities and resilience, but by the same token, the
institutional framework is shaped by existing networks, the previous stock of social
capital, the adaptation capacities and the conditions of resilience. Moreover, additional
influential external variables, such as the available scientific knowledge on disaster risks
and hazards, the main stakeholders involved, their political strategies and practices in
political decision-making processes (politics), the prevailing values and interests in
society, and finally the government-community relations, find themselves in an
interdependent relationship intermediated by the institutional framework of the multi-
level risk governance regime.
Although we have mentioned the reciprocal dependencies between networks/social
capital and resilience/adaptation capacities, we did not add an additional arrow
connecting these variables directly, since we assume that the social dynamic inherent to
social networks is reflected in the institutional arrangements. Hence, our focus in our
empirical study is on the institutional relationships within the network as an indicator for
adaptation capacities and resilience.

4. Methodology, the social network analysis

The use of SNA in our study on risk management in the Aburra Valley certainly does not
allow us to identify, or even to measure, all the influences and relationships at work in
Red Riesgos as illustrated in Figure 2. However, insofar as it makes explicit the social
structures within the institutional governance network, SNA serves to evaluate the value
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 431

Figure 2. Disaster risk governance network in Colombia and the metropolitan area of the Aburra
Valley.

of social capital for multi-level network governance and its contribution to resilience and
adaptation-focused risk governance strategies. Moreover, it makes it possible to identify
and discuss the functions performed by different institutional actors within the network,
and finally to make some conjectures concerning existing interdependencies with the
other influential variables cited in Figure 1. We thereby seek to enhance our overall
understanding of the dynamics of Red Riesgos and, consequently, the role of the city of
Medellin in the construction of the regional risk governance regime, embedded in the
national risk governance system.
The concept of social or policy networks is found in different usages in the
governance literature. It can be used as a mere metaphor, indicating a more horizontal
form of cooperation, or as an analytical operational tool resorting to the mathematical
language of graph theory, matrices and relational algebra (B€orzel 1998). In the latter
sense, SNA serves to identify and schematize the structure of inter-institutional
governance networks by highlighting the established relationships between the different
components or nodes of the network as well as their structural positions in the overall
network (Wellman 1988; Lin 1999; Sanz 2003).
SNA evolved as a measuring and analytical instrument of social structures that arise
from the relationships established between diverse social actors (individuals,
organizations, nations, etc.). Networks are seen as mechanisms of communication,
information transmission and learning, but at the same time, as expressions of power
structures (Borgatti, Everett, and Johnson 2013; Sanz 2003). For our purpose, it is
important to point out that SNA helps to identify the different public and private agents
acting on different scales, within a governance structure that represents relationships of
power.
Furthermore, it allows for distinguishing the structural position of the state in relation
to the other cooperating agents within the governance system. Thus, SNA enables us to
come to a deeper understanding of how the state coordinates the different governmental
levels, how public institutions act upon the different territorial scales, and finally, which
other governmental and non-governmental organizations perform important and
432 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

Table 1. Regulations used for the development of the risk management network of the MAAV.
National  Law 1,523 of 2012, risk management policy.
 Law 1,505 of 2012, creation of the national sub-system of volunteers for emergency
situations.
 Decree 4,147 of 2011, creation of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management.
 Law 1,575 of 2012, creation of the general firemen’s law.
 Law 128 of 1994, Law of Metropolitan Areas in Colombia.
 Law 388 of 1997, establishment of territorial planning parameters.
 Law 1,454 of 2011, organic norms for territorial planning.
 Strategic plan for international cooperation in disaster situations.
Regional  Comprehensive Metropolitan Development Plan 2008–2020, Metropolitan Area of
the Aburra Valley.
 Methodological guide for the elaboration of Departmental Risk Management Plans.
 Design of the metropolitan system for the prevention of, attention to and recovery
from disasters in the Aburra Valley.
Municipal  Methodological guide for the elaboration of the municipal response strategy.
 Decree 1,240 of 2015, creation of the Municipal Disaster Risk Management System;
the Municipal Plan for Disaster Risk Management, the Municipal Strategy for
Emergency Response and the Incident Command System.

Source: Compiled and designed by the authors.

influential functions within the network. It is assumed that the structure and relational
intensity of the network determines its capacity to face disaster risks adequately, and
hence serves as a yardstick for community resilience in view of disaster risks.
To determine the overall structure of the risk governance network for natural disasters
in Colombia and the MAAV (Figure 2), numerous laws, rules and plans have been
identified and analysed in order to specify the functions, responsibilities and institutional
components related to risk governance.
Relying on those national, provincial, regional and municipal laws, decrees and plans,
it was possible to identify the institutional structure related to risk management. Based on
that information a relational matrix has been created with those public and private
agencies endowed with risk management-related responsibilities under current legislation.
Table 1 gives an overview of the regulatory framework in risk management, from the
national to the local level, illustrating existing relationships of institutional
interdependencies and, hence, the structural conditions of the multi-level governance
regime.
On the basis of the identification and mapping of the most relevant institutions, a
relational matrix has been created in order to illustrate and characterize the relationships
that connect the different agencies composing the network. Nevertheless, it is important
to be aware that by applying this methodology we are only able to identify potential, but
not realized or activated, ties (Jones and Faas 2017a, 7). Examining concrete interaction
in the field and network change over time, in concrete contexts of hazard and disasters,
most certainly requires more dynamic methodological approaches quite difficult to
conduct due to the immanent dynamics of such disaster events.
Network analysis is based on the use of relational matrices, where the basic elements
are, first, the actors or agents establishing relationships amongst themselves and, second,
the relationships or social ties, which can be directional or bidirectional. In the graphical
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 433

representation, as in Figure 1, the nodes represent the different actors in the network and
the ties connecting these actors.
The relational matrix was processed by using UCINETÒ software, identifying the
position of each institutional agent and, hence, their relative strength or power within the
network, expressed in the measure of centrality. Two different centrality measures have
to be distinguished: (1) degree centrality, which describes the number of connections of
one node, possibly weighted by the strength of each tie, and (2) betweenness centrality,
that is, the number of times that a given node falls along the shortest path between two
other actors (Borgatti, Everett, and Johnson 2013). Both measures take into account the
number of organizations linked to each individual organization, the degree of exclusivity
of the ties, as well as their position in the overall network (Sanz 2003).

5. The regional risk management network ‘Red Riesgos’

Due to its geographical location, Colombia is characterized by a great geological,
geomorphological, hydrological and climatic diversity, being one of the countries most
vulnerable to disasters (Banco Mundial 2012, 13). Due to its high vulnerability and
exposure to different types of threats, Colombia has committed itself to the reduction of
disaster risks by signing different international treaties, such as the Hyogo Framework for
Action (ONU 2005) and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (ONU 2015).
These treaties bind Colombia to cooperate with other member countries by adopting
common vulnerability reduction strategies (UNGRD 2015) Other multilateral
cooperation agreements at the regional level have emerged, such as the Andean
Committee for Disaster Prevention and Care (CAPRADE) from 2002, where Colombia,
Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia have committed themselves to a common risk management
policy (Comunidad Andina 2013).
In the aftermath of several devastating climatic events between 2010 and 2012, the
national risk management policy and the National System for Disaster Risk Management
(SNGRD) were redesigned by Law No. 1,523 dated 24 April 2012 (CRC [Congreso de la
Rep
ublica de Colombia] 2012). This put in place a structure of territorial coordination
under the leadership of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD),
supported by three National Committees concerning Risk Knowledge (CNCR), Risk
Reduction (CNRR) and Disaster Management (CNGR) (UNGRD 2016).
UNGRD is responsible for coordinating and guiding the multi-level risk governance
regime by means of land-use instruments such as the land management plans, the
territorial watershed management plans and the governmental development plans that
exist at the different government levels. Thus, UNGRD is also responsible for the
coordination of the regional risk management plan of the MAAV,1 whereas the regional
network ‘Red Riesgos’ is in charge of its implementation. For that it resorts to the
regional risk management plan, which aims to articulate the work of actors from public
and private entities, as well as civil society organizations. Additional objectives are to
seek a shared political vision, share the most effective legislation, create institutional
networks capable of engendering a collaborative culture and establish an aid fund to
provide incentives for inter-municipal cooperation.
Citizen participation in Red Riesgos is achieved through the involvement of
community organizations composed of groups located in the municipality of Medellin,
which all together form the “Community Network of Environmental Committees.”
Within these community networks there are the Special Disasters Prevention and
Attention Committees (COPADES), present only in the urban area of Medellin; the
434 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

Disaster Prevention and Attention Education Committees (CEPAD), available in all

municipalities; and finally, the Environmental Committees (CUIDA) that only exist in
the rural area of Medellin (Coup
e 2011), revealing the protagonist role of Medellin in
regard to the consolidation of a local institutional prevention and response capacity to
disaster risks.
The city of Medellin, together with local research centres and public and private
universities, has played an important role in the consolidation of Red Riesgo, providing
technical cooperation to the other municipalities of the region in regard to the
identification and diagnosis of threats and vulnerabilities. Likewise, the early warning
system (SIATA), one of the most complete and technologically advanced systems in
Colombia, financed by public and private companies, generates warning reports with
respect to environmental threats for all municipalities of MAAV. This cooperative
governance arrangement has enabled those municipalities with less economic resources
to develop their land-use plans incorporating concerns about risks. Likewise, taxes such
as the environmental levy, collected by the MAAV, have made it possible to raise
additional resources for the achievement of Red Riesgos objectives.
The community networks assembled around the Environmental Committees aim to
facilitate community participation with regard to disaster prevention and response. On
the local level, they coordinate actions, strategies and competences of their own members
as well as of representatives of environmental authorities, municipal administrations and
relief agencies, which are the main pillars of support for a special task group concerned
with environmental issues and risk management (Aristizabal, Vargas, and Mesa 2008;
Toro et al. 2010).
Various incidents that resulted in severe disasters have contributed to increasing
awareness with respect to risks in the MAAV. In 1987, more than 500 people lost their
lives in the Villatina neighborhood in Medellin and around 1,700 people were injured due
to a severe landslide. As a consequence, civil society’s willingness to engage in risk
prevention activities has risen (Arbaux, Restrepo, and Ramirez 2010).
The social capital, based on a web of social and communitarian organizations, has
proved decisive for Red Riesgo. The local governments contract civil society and
communitarian organizations for delivering public services and carrying out measures of
risk reduction and environmental protection. They also participate in the municipal risk
management councils, where they are involved in the elaboration of plans for risk
reduction and disaster response.
For our study, the network is assumed to be characterized by social ties connecting its
institutional members. Shared interests, sense of reciprocity, synergies, management
mechanisms, coordination efforts, information and communication flows, as well as
commitment to the well-being of the common territory are important measures and
provisions; the ‘glue’ that binds local actors together for acting collectively in favour of
the local community and reflecting the social capital available to the territory.
In Figure 2, it is possible to appreciate the relationships between the different actors
and entities based on the regulatory framework, presented in Table 1. In order to
understand the relational structure within the organizational network, degree and
betweenness centralities are highlighted seeking to identify and characterize relationships
of power and influence within the network. Table 2 enables the identification of the risk
management agencies acting in the MAAV, their key characteristic and scale of
operation.
Under the following heading, we explain, describe and analyse some relevant
structural network measures and how they relate to the sociogram in Figure 2.
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 435

Table 2. Risk management agencies in the MAAV.

Agencies Key characteristics Scale of operation

UN-Habitat UN Agency International

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk UN Agency International
Reduction (UNISDR)
National System for Disaster Risk Governmental National
Management (SNGRD)
The National Committees for Risk Governmental National
Knowledge (CNCR)
The National Committees for Risk Governmental National
Reduction (CNRR)
The National Committees for Disaster Governmental National
Management (CNME).
Red Riesgos Governmental Regional
The monitoring and early warning Public–private partnership Regional
system SIATA
Department of Disaster Prevention and Governmental Regional
Attention (DAPARD)
Municipal Council Offices (CMGRD) Governmental Municipal
Civil Defence Government-civil society- Municipal
cooperation
C-40 Cities Climate Leadership Group International city network International and
municipal-medellin
ICLEI International City International and
Network municipal-medellin
Committees for Special Disasters Civil society Local – urban area
Prevention and Attention
(COPADES)
Education Committees for Disaster Civil society Local – schools
Prevention and Attention (CEPAD)
Environmental Committees (CUIDA) Civil society Local – rural area

Source: compiled and designed by the authors.

5.1. Degree – relations between nodes

Degree is defined as the number of direct ties that one actor maintains with all the other
actors/nodes of the network. The bigger the node in Figure 2, the higher is the degree for
the specific actor. The size of the node also reveals the number of established ties with
the different risk management institutions and, hence, its relative centrality and power in
the network. Most strongly connected are the regional organizations (diamond shape),
connecting the national with the local organizations.
Not surprisingly, Red Riesgos (the olive-coloured diamond in the centre) presents the
largest number of relationships in the overall network, with a total of 37 ties (in degree C
out degree). This central role of Red Riesgos in the metropolitan network is due to the
fact that it is an open organizational network with inter-institutional characteristics in
charge of (1) the guidance and coordination of risk policies, (2) risk analysis and
reduction measures, (3) the preparation and implementation of response measures, and
(4), in the case of a disaster, with emergency and recovery measures. In order to handle
those highly complex and diverse tasks, Red Riesgos mobilizes, coordinates and
436 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

integrates a wide range of organizations, and attracts and interacts with public and private
entities, from the municipal and regional to the provincial level. In the social capital
terminology, it performs a ‘bridging’ function, as it coordinates action and provides
information across the different scales, mediating relations from the national to the
community level.
Other institutions deserve to be highlighted for their fundamental contributions to Red
Riesgos. The monitoring and early warning system SIATA (dark blue diamond), which is
connected to 20 other agencies such as the Municipal Council offices which conduct
local risk management (CMGRD), is one of the main metropolitan risk management
tools on which the risk management offices at the municipal level can rely. The main
objective of SIATA is to warn the community, in a timely manner, about the probability
of extreme hydrological events prone to generate emergencies. Thus, it helps to reduce
the impacts of such events by taking appropriate measures to respond to imminent threats.
The Department of Disaster Prevention and Attention (DAPARD, dark red diamond)
performs 19 connections with other nodes, amongst them the risk management offices of
the Municipal Councils in the Metropolitan Area (CMGRD), municipal authorities, city
halls, and the monitoring system SIATA. DAPARD is the main regional administrative
entity that coordinates the municipal offices in charge of risk management and is also
responsible for developing and regulating the Departmental Risk Management Plan.
Based on the national law on risk policy, DAPARD plays the same role at the
departmental level that Red Riesgos plays on the metropolitan scale.
At the national level, the National Risk Management Council (CNGR; yellow
triangle) is connected to 15 agencies such as the different national ministries. CNGR is
the political body responsible at the national level for coordinating, consulting, planning,
monitoring and ensuring the effectiveness of processes related to risk awareness, risk
reduction and disaster management. On the other hand, the CNGR, according to Law No.
1,523 of 2012, is the main locally responsible entity acting and communicating directly
with the National Risk Management Unit (UNGRD; green triangle), the central technical
body on the national scale. Its task is to promote, at the local level, the consistent
operationalization of the guidelines, principles and strategies defined centrally by CNGR
for the whole country.
At the municipal level, each of the Municipal Council risk management offices
(CMGRD) (squares, all in light green) exhibits nine relationships with the Fire
Department, the Civil Defence, the Police, and the Municipal Hospitals. CMGRD,
comprising several municipal departments, such as education, public health, mobility and
land-use planning, is the administrative body that coordinates the municipal entities
involved in local risk management and is also responsible for developing and regulating
the Municipal Risk Management Plan.
Each Fire Department of the nine municipalities (BOM, little grey squares) holds four
relationships and each municipal Civil Defence Authority (little black squares) three
relationships. The Fire Department and the Civil Defence Authority are directly
connected to social organizations, such as the Education Committees for Disaster
Prevention and Attention CEPAD (little black squares), each with three connections.
In the case of Medellin, the municipal risk management office (DAGRD-M, little
navy blue square) presents more relationships than the other eight municipalities.
Medellin has two additional civil organizations supporting risk management: the
Committees of Special Disasters Prevention and Attention (COPADES) and the
Environmental Committees (CUIDA). Each of those organizations performs different
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 437

actions concerning knowledge production and transfer, risk reduction and disaster
management.
In the peripheral part of the network, organizations such as the police and municipal
hospitals (little squares in red) are linked with only one tie to the overall network. They
are only connected to the municipal risk management offices, being part of the overall
strategy for emergency management, fulfilling very specific tasks concerning prevention,
adaptation, mitigation and/or emergency measures.
At the national level, the red triangles represent public entities such as ministries, the
army, the National Red Cross, all of which are only indirectly connected to Red Riesgos
via the National Risk Management Council (CNGR). The influence of the national
authorities is therefore only indirect, mediated by important broker institutions, so that
MAAV enjoys a reasonable autonomy in its daily work and decision-making, without
having to renounce support from higher institutional levels.
Finally, international organizations such as the United Nations Office for Disaster
Risk Reduction (UNISDR), the Andean Committee for Disaster Prevention (CAPRADE),
UNASUR, UN-HABITAT and CEPAL (Economic Commission for Latin America and
the Caribbean), all highlighted in blue circles, must also be mentioned. Even if all of
them appear in Figure 2 with low-degree measures, they have outstanding importance,
having provided general principles and strategies for the whole governance system. There
are still other international organizations such as the World Bank, which has supported
the elaboration of the National Law of risk management, but without direct influence on
risk management in Colombia.

5.2. Mediation (betweenness)

The measures of centrality and power are not only represented by the number of ties that
connect the different actors (degree), but they can also be analysed from the point of view
of the structural position occupied by the actors within the network, making possible
horizontal, but also inter-scalar, cooperation or multi-level governance. Mediation refers
to the position of an actor/node (A) that is in the middle of the connection between two
other nodes (B and C). Thus, mediation (betweenness) refers to the potential of a node or
actor/institution, located in the path of communication between two other nodes that puts
him in a favourable condition to control information flows as well as concrete actions that
happen in the network. Mediation helps to understand the level of centrality and power of
an actor based on his structural position in the network. Nodes with high mediation
values represent actors who favour communication between subgroups, cliques or blocks
of nodes, and therefore represent structural bridges of communication (Sanz 2003) that
correspond to the ‘bridging’ function in the social capital terminology, contributing to
broader identities and reciprocity within social networks (Putnam 2001, 22–23).

5.2.1. Structural bridges

The National Unit for Disaster Risk Management (UNGRD) (grey triangle) and Red
Riesgos (dark green diamond) exhibit the highest betweenness values. The positions of
these nodes are identified as structural bridges between the national and the metropolitan
or regional level. Their centrality and power position is based on offering a
communication channel between the national and the metropolitan scale, hence fulfilling
a bridging function (a passage point on a path connecting two nodes) between the two
territorial scales promoting inter-scalar flows of resources and information.
438 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

Meanwhile, the structural position allows the National Risk Management Unit
(UNGRD) to adopt the coordination function between the different territorial levels of
the National Risk Management System (SNGRD), bringing together private participants,
social organizations and NGOs, in order to develop and to enforce the internal
regulations of the national system, such as decrees, decisions, circulars, concepts and
working standards. The prominent structural position of Red Riesgos at the metropolitan
level arises from its role in coordinating, consulting, planning, monitoring, and thus
ensuring the effectiveness of the processes related to risk awareness, risk reduction and
disaster management for the nine municipalities in the region. Moreover, insofar as Red
Riesgos holds regular relationships with the Environmental Committees CUIDA it
connects the local communities with the regional and national risk management system,
thereby promoting a form of linking social capital.
Clusters of nodes. The importance of clusters of nodes, as seen from the mediation
point of view, derives from their role of grouping different agents around specific tasks
that have to be put into execution. This is the case of the different risk management
committees as they are formed by various public and private actors, such as the National
Committees for Risk Knowledge (CNCR, light green triangle), Risk Reduction (CNRR,
pink triangle) and for Disaster Management (CNGD, light green triangle).
The importance of these Committees lies in their capacity to form groups of multi-
sector agencies that take into account different views and interpretations of risks, turning
their deliberations and agreements into socially defined and constructed products. Their
structural position in the network provides them with strong coordination capacities in
dealing with other network actors.
The importance of CNCR derives from its central role in the identification of risk
scenarios regarding threats, vulnerabilities and exposure of people and goods, and the
management of the risk knowledge process. The membership of universities, research
institutes in environmental, meteorological and socioecological aspects and the National
Administrative Department of Statistics (DANE) ensure the necessary technical and
scientific competence of the committee.
The competences of CNRR are related more specifically to policy-making regarding
risk reduction in the fields of environmental management and policy, territorial and
development planning, and adaptation to climate change. Finally, CNGD is in charge of
policy-making concerning disaster management, being responsible and accountable for
the formulation of the national emergency response strategy. The Committee counts on
representatives from the National Army, the National Police, Colombian Civil Defence,
Colombian Red Cross and the Colombian Fire Brigade.
Another very important institution is the National Risk Management Council (CNGR,
yellow triangle), which comprises the President of Colombia, the ministers of the
different sectors (11 altogether), the General Director of the National Planning
Department (DNP) and the director of the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management,
who presides over the council. CNGR is responsible for the guidance, planning, approval,
implementation, coordination and evaluation of the national risk management policies
and plan.
Finally, the National Planning Department (DNP, grey triangle) occupies a strategic
position within the network insofar as it coordinates the Committees for Risk Knowledge,
Risk Reduction, and for Disaster Management, as well as the National Council for Risk
Management, bestowing a high level of mediation on the DNP. Its function consists
basically in developing a strategic vision of the country in the social, economic and
environmental fields, through the design, monitoring and evaluation of Colombian public
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 439

policies, the management and allocation of public investment and the implementation of
government plans, programs and projects. The different risk management councils are
supported by DNP, with the goal of legitimizing their institutional functions through
technical advice for the development of the different instruments in territorial planning.

5.3. Some achievements

Since it was founded 14 years ago, the risk governance regime implemented in the
MAAV has been able to establish a set of measures, instruments and plans that have
strengthened the municipalities’ capacity to deal collectively with the diverse challenges
related to hazards and risks. It is worth mentioning some of these achievements such as
micro-zoning and evaluation of seismic risks; diagnosis of threats, vulnerabilities and
risks related to landslides, torrential floods and overbank flooding as instruments of
territorial planning; inventory of risk situations; evaluation and zoning of forests with
regard to their fire susceptibility; elaboration of maps regarding chemical and other
transport-related dangerous substances; development of studies and design of disaster
reduction and mitigation measures aiming at the reduction of social, economic, and
environmental losses and damage foreseen by the distinct risk scenarios; watershed and
river cleaning; and finally, public information campaigns and inter-institutional training
for emergency response.

6. Conclusion
In Colombia, we can observe a limited autonomy of the different territorial scales,
regarding decision-making and concrete action options in Risk Management, as all
involved institutions act under the direction of a centrally instituted management system,
supported by an internationally promoted coordination framework, thus featuring a
complex regime with strong interdependencies, requiring relationships of trust to work
effectively. However, the huge variety of experiences is the first clear evidence of the
importance of city governments to put into effect the national risk management
framework at the local and regional levels. As shown in this research, the local
governments of the Aburra Valley, under the lead of the major city Medellin, have
provided a supplementary institutional structure at the local level for a conceptually
consistent multi-level risk governance regime.
As has been shown, the use of SNA provides a better understanding of centrality and
power relationships between the agents involved. This set of institutional relationships
can be understood as a risk governance regime capable of linking multiple territorial
scales by establishing strategic structural positions, occupied by strong mediating
institutions that fulfil bridging and linking functions across territorial scales, enabling
high levels of organizational centrality and implementation power, and at the same time
allowing, on the local and regional scale, the implementation of innovative arrangements
and practices, as shown in the case of Red Riesgos. The institutional arrangements exert a
crucial role in strengthening the social capital in the sense of bonding – by local groups
as the Environmental Committees CUIDA – as well as linking and bridging – by means
of intermediating organizations that support the flow of information across scales from
the community to the national institutions, and horizontally between the different
territorial sub-networks, interacting on the metropolitan scale.
Thus, the Colombian government has developed a fairly promising approach to
collaborative governance with various agencies involved across different territorial
440 K. Frey and D.R.C. Ram
ırez

scales. This has favoured the proliferation of an institutional network as a governance

regime potentially able to harmonize local and regional self-organization with central
regulation and control. This experience rests upon a governance arrangement as a control
and coordination system that allows the Colombian state to implement a comprehensive
policy of risk prevention and disaster mitigation depending, however, on a corresponding
local and regional governance structure, such as that put into operation in the MAAV by
the local city governments.
Thus, risk management in Colombia is based on a collaborative public policy network
that seeks to strengthen the ability of the state to improve its capacity for action through
laws, the application of rules and regulatory incentives. Insofar as regional, local and
even communitarian governance structures and collaborative practices are promoted, as
in the case of the Aburra Valley, this type of multi-level network governance of disaster
risks is part of an ongoing rescaling process of a traditionally centralized Columbian
state, trying to strengthen the local and regional level with the objective of enhancing
flexibility and resilience in a context of increasing complexity and uncertainties.
Even though in the case of the Aburra Valley, with its already consolidated
institutional structures and cooperative practices on the metropolitan scale, the local
governments have quite successfully created a corresponding governance system for risk
management, more comparative research ought to be undertaken to verify to what extent
cities and regions with less favourable institutional conditions are equally capable of
establishing similar governance structures and practices; or to what extent the state, at the
national and departmental levels, proves that it has the necessary flexibility, providing
due institutional support for institutional resilience. Another important concern is to what
extent diminishing financial resources in the current context of pressure for austerity
politics will undermine governmental efforts to adopt effective adaptation and mitigation
policies.
Applying SNA on the basis of the established regulatory framework of risk
management, nationally and specifically in the Aburra Valley, we were able to identify
the most central actors such as the National Unit for Disaster Risk Management and the
regional network Red Riesgos, featuring as main structural bridges, which characterizes
them as fundamental for the effective functioning of the governance regime. What we
were not able to capture, were the actual processes of articulation, cooperation,
deliberation and, probably likewise, of contestation and obstruction that may characterize
the daily practice of risk governance.
Hence, there is need for microanalysis, in the case of the Aburra Valley, but also in a
comparative perspective with other regions and localities. It would be worth studying the
concrete interactions taking place within such governance arrangements. In order to
figure out the degree of democratic legitimacy of these arrangements it is crucial to verify
to what extent the local communities have an effective say in these matters; whether
citizens are represented in their social diversity, exercise democratic control, becoming
really empowered in view of the risks at stake; or whether these network arrangements
favour more technocratic management practices, limiting the role of communities and
citizens to mere addressees of public policies, welcoming them basically as volunteers
serving a neoliberal state more and more withdrawing from its proper responsibilities.
However, in order to capture these local governance dynamics SNA have certainly to be
complemented by other, primarily qualitative and interpretational research methods.
Ultimately, the effectiveness of the multi-level governance network of disaster risks
depends, first and foremost, on the protagonist performances of local governments, on
their abilities to involve local communities and citizens and to interact constantly with
 Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 441

the higher-level intermediary authorities, making available their overall resources for the
everyday work. This means that the institutions designed will only be able to fulfil their
intended purpose, enhancing regional resilience and adaptation capacities, if effectively
assimilated by public authorities and by the people potentially affected by disaster risks.
Thus, to speak with the editors of this special section (van der Heijden et al. 2018), it is of
essence that future research on disaster risk prevention takes a more critical stance on the
role of public urban authorities in multi-level governance networks.

Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the participants of the INOGOV Workshop on Innovative urban
governance for mitigation and adaptation: mapping, exploring and interrogating, held in
Amsterdam from 22 to 23 September 2016, for their very helpful comments and suggestions. We
specially would like to thank the workshop organizer, Prof. Jeroen van der Heijden, for his critical
and very valuable review of the paper, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their perceptive
feedback. Of course, only the authors are responsible for the content.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
The research was funded by the Brazilian National Council of Scientific and Technological
Development (CNPq) [grant number 311887/2013-9]; and the Brazilian Coordination for the
Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) [grant number 1373863].

Note
1. The Metropolitan Area is composed of nine municipalities: Medellin, Sabaneta, Caldas,
Envigado, Girardota, Itagui, Copacabana, Barbosa and Bello, in the Antioquia Department.
The main functions of the Metropolitan Area are related to territorial and environmental
planning and management, public metropolitan transport and the execution of public works at
the metropolitan level (AMVA 2007).

ORCID
Klaus Frey http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7564-1764
Daniel Ricardo Calder
on Ram
ırez http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1127-2602

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