Managed retreat as a response to natural hazard risk

For a long time, the instinct has been to protect everything in place. It’s only recently that we’re seeing a significant increase in societies in various forms deciding that isn’t the right choice for them.

Miyuki Hino, a PhD candidate at Stanford who led the research

• Evaluates the drivers, barriers and outcomes of 27 recent cases of managed retreat that have resettled approximately 1.3 million people
• Organizes the diverse set of cases into four quadrants: a conceptual model based on two key factors—who benefits from retreat and who initiates it
• Finds that different sociopolitical dimensions emerge as particularly influential in each quadrant
• States that the model establishes a foundation for understanding and anticipating case-specific complexities and that it can be used to unpack the landscape of managed retreat and evaluate its potential future applications