To which extent are socio-hydrology studies really integrative? The case of natural hazards and disaster research
Abstract. Given the recent developments in socio-hydrology and its potential contributions to disaster risk reduction (DRR), we conducted a systematic literature review of socio-hydrological studies aiming to identify persisting gaps and discuss tractable approaches for tackling them. A total of 44 articles that address natural hazards or disasters were reviewed in detail. Our results indicated that: (i) 77.3 % of the studies addressed floods whereas there were very few research applications for droughts (11.4 %) and compound or multi-hazards (11.4 %); (ii) none of the articles investigated interactions across temporal and spatial scales; (iii) quantitative approaches were used more often (65.9 %) in comparison to mixed (22.7 %) and qualitative (11.4 %) approaches; (iv) monodisciplinary studies prevailed (61.4 %) over multi or interdisciplinary (9.1 %) ones, and (v) only 34.1 % of the articles involved stakeholder participation. In summary, we found that there is a fragmentation in the field, with a multitude of social and physical components, methods and data sources being used. Based on these findings, we point out potential ways of tackling the identified challenges to advance socio-hydrology, including studying multiple hazards in a joint framework and exploiting new methods for integrating results from qualitative and quantitative analyses to leverage on the strengths of different fields of knowledge. Addressing these challenges will improve our understanding of human-water interactions to support DRR.