Developing Community Resilience as a Foundation for Effective Disaster Recovery

Abstract

Recent research into community resilience, both in Australia and the United Kingdom (UK), indicates that resilience is a multi-dimensional attribute that in its different forms contributes in various but equally important ways to disaster recovery. The author starts with the premise that effective recovery can be achieved only where the affected community participates fully in the recovery process and where it has the capacity, skills and knowledge to make its participation meaningful. Resilience addresses the second of these qualities; in fact it may be defined as the total of the individual elements, but is ineffectual without the means of engagement through participation with the wider social, economic and political communities. The research focuses on four particular areas: 1. The changing risk landscape where new types of risks are emerging that are not amenable to the traditional command and control management model. 2. The changing policy agenda of governments since the attacks of 911 1, in particular the UK's Resilience Agenda. 3. The engagement of local people, whether planned or not, in the recovery process. 4. The limited capacity of emergency services to deal with the protracted and multifarious demands of comprehensive recovery. This research is derived from a variety of sources including direct experience in recovery management and the investigation of community and emergency service responses to different types of disasters. Community resilience is largely neglected in planning and in operations, though in practice community engagement in recovery, a measure of resilience tends to happen spontaneously. In this sense resilience may be inherent or at least developed in situ after a disaster. However, resilience can also be planned for and developed before a disaster strikes. The author indicates that there are a variety of capacity building methods, and especially linkages with other capacity building programmes, that can materially increase community resilience.

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