Disaster Preparedness Resources For Community Based Organizations And Specific Populations

Author : Lan Thi Nguyen
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (129 download)

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Download or read book Community Matters written by Lan Thi Nguyen and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People have capacities, skills, and knowledge that they often utilize to recover from a disaster but which are overlooked by planners and policymakers. Voices of ordinary people, especially those who are marginalized, need to be heard and incorporated in disaster risk reduction activities. Disaster researchers, planners, and ordinary people can learn from each other and co-create new knowledge to collectively devise effective solutions to persistent problems. In this dissertation, I examine disaster preparedness and mitigation through individual and community lenses using social vulnerability, asset-based community development, and social capital theories. Social vulnerability research primarily focuses on systems of oppression that create vulnerable places and people but rarely accounts for community-based assets that could be used for disaster readiness. In Chapter 2, which is a case study of Plain, Washington, I found that a community readiness approach that is asset-based, internally focused, and relationship-driven may help mobilize local people, organizations, and institutions to actively engage with one another, and devise solutions on the multiple ways to survive and adapt to wildfires and subsequent flooding in the wildland urban interface. This approach can help urban planning and emergency management practitioners engage local assets to solve localized resilience problems for the long-term. Combined with scenario planning methods, this process produced four future scenarios using fire, flooding, and population as drivers of change in Plain. In a planning workshop, participants used stories about the community's identity, values, and assets to develop (1) robust mitigation strategies that would be appropriate for a wide range of future change scenarios, thus helping to set investment and policy priorities even given uncertainty about the future; as well as (2) a suite of different contingent mitigation strategies that are each appropriate for a specific modeled future change scenario. Chapters 3 and 4 use an asset-based community readiness approach and employ survey research methods and a survey experiment to assess individual and community-level factors related to disaster preparedness and resilience to earthquakes. These studies rely on data from a mail survey sent to a random sample of Seattle households (N=1,342) stratified by zip codes selected for their contrasting demographic characteristics called South Seattle (ethnically diverse, low-income, less formally educated) and Other Seattle (predominantly white, middle- to high-income, more formally educated). Chapter 3 assesses how day-to-day resources, specifically food, water, and social capital, could influence disaster preparedness across different communities. Measurements of social capital (bonding and bridging) were associated with increased preparedness. This suggests that those with greater social capital are likely to be more prepared before and during disasters. Other Seattle reported more bridging social capital than South Seattle, meaning they are likely to have more connections with individuals who are not like them in respect to socioeconomic or other characteristics, who are available to support them in response and recovery. Accounting for shared resources was induced in half of the surveys (randomly assigned to half of each sample by zip code) by framing the preparedness questions with "Consider how you and your family, friends and neighbors might share." Accounting for shared resources increased reported preparedness levels beyond asking for reports of resources available to individual households. Available resources vary in quantity and quality across different communities in large part due to historical processes that advantage, and disadvantage, different groups based on race, sex, gender, and other characteristics. A ramification of systematic inequality may be warranted lack of trust and low perceptions of fairness in historically disadvantaged communities. Feelings of fairness and general reciprocity (trust) can impact who people expect to rely on post-disaster assistance. Chapter 4 measures perceived fairness and trust across community types, and examines how perceived fairness, general reciprocity, and preparedness influence expected reliance on local informal (household members and people in the neighborhood) and formal professional (fire, police, and emergency personnel) response groups. Respondents in South Seattle reported less perceived fairness and less trust than respondents in Other Seattle. General reciprocity was positively associated with reliance on both informal and formal response and recovery support groups, after controlling for other influences. Also, increased preparedness was associated with more reliance on household members and people in the neighborhood, and less expected reliance on fire, police, and emergency personnel, all else equal. These studies advance disaster research by incorporating and engaging latent resources into disaster preparedness. They demonstrate the value of using an asset-based community readiness approach where existing social, built, and natural assets are used as a baseline for disaster preparedness. These resources can be strengthened through community-building activities to achieve resilience to various hazards.