Local disaster vulnerability analysis : an approach to identify communities (original) (raw)
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The Ayamama River basin in Istanbul is a densely populated urban area that is frequently impacted by flash floods causing damage to people and infrastructure. The IPCC expects that under climate change conditions, more intense precipitation will occur, leading to a higher risk of flash floods. Approaches to assess vulnerability focus on particular hazards without relating to climate change; usually emphasizing either physical or social vulnerability. However, enabling governance systems to deal with risks due to climate change requires participation of local inhabitants and inclusion of local knowledge for planning effective climate change adaptation measures. This paper presents a framework for a spatial assessment of urban vulnerability to flash floods under climate change conditions. Qualitative interviews were conducted to capture local knowledge of citizens in the Ayamama area about flood events and climate change. Spatial multi criteria evaluation was applied to calculate vuln...
International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2020
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From theory to practice: building more resilient communities in flood-prone areas
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Enhancing community resilience is key to reducing vulnerability in the face of natural hazards. In this article, we discuss the elements that support or undermine community resilience to floods and propose ways of enhancing it. In the study, participatory methods and techniques were used with community members and emergency managers from a flood-prone municipality of Puerto Rico, including conceptual mapping, participatory mapping, and listing and ranking. The findings suggest that enhancing resilience in these communities requires: support for social learning by building on existing knowledge; stressing the importance of developing a diverse set of flood management options; and promoting effective linkages and collaborations between community members and emergency managers to encourage collective flood management. For this to happen, however, mutual distrust, lack of confidence and other obstacles must be overcome.
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Over the past few decades, four distinct and largely independent research and policy communities-disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, environmental management and poverty reduction-have been actively engaged in reducing socioeconomic vulnerability to natural hazards. However, despite the significant efforts of these communities, the vulnerability of many individuals and communities to natural hazards continues to increase considerably. In particular, it is hydrometeorological hazards that affect an increasing number of people and cause increasingly large economic losses. Arising from the realisation that these four communities have been largely working in isolation and enjoyed only limited success in reducing vulnerability, there is an emerging perceived need to strengthen significantly collaboration and to facilitate learning and information exchange between them. This article examines key communalities and differences between the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction communities, and proposes three exercises that would help to structure a multi-community dialogue and learning process.