Centering Communities in Disaster Management

THE CHALLENGE

Decades of evidence show that communities are central to effective disaster managgement. Yet communities are repeatedly excluded from disaster-related decisionmaking structures, resulting in programming that is inefficient, ineffective, and often inequitable.

This work set out to understand the barriers preventing meaningful community involvement in disaster programming, and to develop practical tools that organizations can use to engage communities more effectively before, during, and after disaster.

THE APPROACH

- Fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups with communities across the US Gulf Coast, Alaska, Syria, Sierra Leone, Honduras, Bangladesh, and Kenya to identify barriers to community participation

- Coproduction of community resilience tools and recovery strategies in direct partnership with affected communities and local organizations

- A $330K NSF-funded multi-country study of climate adaptation and collective action as Principal Investigator

- Development and practitioner testing of community resilience metrics

- Policy analysis of how disaster management institutions include or exclude community voices, including a case study of FEMA

- Case studies of community-driven recovery following oil spills, wildfires, landslides, hurricanes, and conflict

- Dissemination through convenings and scientific and technical publications in collaboration with partners

THE OUTCOME

Practitioner-ready tools for measuring and strengthening community resilience, policy analysis and recommendations for more inclusive disaster governance, and evidence on community-driven recovery across a range of hazards and geographies.

Further reading

Practitioner approaches to measuring community resilience: The analysis of the resilience of communities to disasters toolkit International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

When disaster management agencies create disaster risk: a case study of the US's Federal Emergency Management Agency Disaster Prevention and Management

Risk Technopolitics in Freetown Slums: Why Community Based Disaster Management Is No Silver Bullet Critical Disaster Studies

Social vulnerability shapes the experiences of climate migrants displaced by Hurricane Maria Climate and Development

Building Community Resilience to Large Oil Spills: Findings and Recommendations from a Synthesis of Research on the Mental Health, Economic, and Community Distress Associated with the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill RAND Corporation

Community-Driven Recovery: The Lahaina Wildfires a Year Later The RAND Blog

Efforts to End a Stalemate in Landslide Insurance Availability through Inclusive Policymaking: A Case Study in Sitka, Alaska International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction

Collective Action by Community Groups: Solutions for Climate Change or Different Players in the Same Game? Climate and Development

We must address inequality to build back better from disasters CNN