Centering Communities in Disaster Management and Recovery

THE CHALLENGE

From the U.S. Gulf Coast to Freetown, Sierra Leone, I have worked alongside communities affected by disasters. Decades of evidence show that communities are central to effective disaster management, yet they are repeatedly excluded from decision-making, producing programs that are inefficient, ineffective, and often inequitable. My work identifies the barriers to meaningful community involvement and develops tools organizations can use to engage communities before, during, and after disasters.

THE APPROACH

- Fieldwork, interviews, and focus groups with communities in the U.S. Gulf Coast, Alaska, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh, and Kenya, with remote research in Syria and Honduras

- Coproduction of resilience tools and recovery strategies with affected communities and local organizations

- An NSF/Belmont Forum-funded multi-country study of community collective action on climate change, as Principal Investigator

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

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

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

THE OUTCOME

Recommendations for more inclusive disaster governance, evidence on community-driven recovery across hazards and geographies, and coproduced tools for community engagement.

Further reading

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

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

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

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

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