Engaging Communities in Disaster Resilience

THE CHALLENGE

There is now decades of evidence showing the centrality of communities in disaster resilience. Yet time and time again communities are excluded from disaster-related decisionmaking structures, resulting in programming that is inefficient and ineffective.

We set out to understand the barriers inhibiting community involvement in disaster-related programming and develop tools that organizations could easily use to enhance how they engage with communities before, during, and after disaster.

THE APPROACH

- Partnerships with communities and nongovermental agencies to identify barriers and coproduce tools

- Deep-dive case studies of community resilience in the US Gulf Coast, Alaska, Syria, Sierra Leone, and Honduras

- Development of community resilience metrics and recovery plans and strategies

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

THE OUTCOME

Tools for measuring community resilience designed for practitioners, technical publications on community-driven disaster management, and updated community resilience and disaster recovery policies and strategies.

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