Abstract for: Participatory System dynamics modelling for collaborative flood infrastructure planning and decision-making

Climate change, underdevelopment, and rapid urbanisation exacerbated flooding risks in the Himalayan Mountains regions. This highlights the need for improved infrastructure planning and decision-making to strengthen resilience to flood impacts. Traditional "predict-and-control" approaches and top-down frameworks demonstrate limitations in addressing the multifaceted nature of the flood resilience concept. While existing literature focuses on technical aspects of flood resilience, such as risk assessment and providing physical reinforcements, it lacks a holistic consideration of social, environmental, geographical, and technical dimensions. This study addresses this limitation by integrating Grid-Group Theory within the Participatory system dynamics (PSD) approach. This approach helps to understand diverse perspectives, develop a shared understanding around complex issues such as flood risks and enables the co-development of flood resilience infrastructure solutions. This research applies this method in underdeveloped, high-risk regions such as Gilgit-Baltistan, Pakistan, in the Himalayan Mountains region. This research uses a mixed method to employ qualitative methods (participatory workshops, focus group discussions, and project-specific interviews) to develop the system dynamics models with diverse stakeholders (Local authorities, NGOs, private sector, and local communities) and quantitative methods (statistical and sensitivity analyses) for data analysis and model validation. This multidisciplinary research contributes to knowledge surrounding resilience, infrastructure planning and participatory system dynamics modelling methods for enhancing decision-making in flood resilience infrastructure planning and implementation.