Disaster Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Citation

Riyanti Djalante, Susanti Djalante and Muhammad Sabaruddin Sinapoy (2016), "Disaster Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 25 No. 2, pp. 275-278. https://doi.org/10.1108/DPM-12-2015-0279

The book Disaster Resilience: Interdisciplinary Perspectives is the fourth book of the Routledge research in public administration and public policy. The book is foreworded by Kathleen Tierney, a Professor from Department of Sociology and Institute of Behavioural Science, Natural hazard Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and also by Sira Sureshwara from the US Department of Agriculture.

This book is a compilation of works by the three editors and 26 contributors. The editors are Naim Kapucu, Christopher Hawkins and Fernando Rivera. Naim Kapucu is a Professor of public policy and administration at the school of Public Administration at the University of Central Florida (UCF). He has published widely of articles, books and policy papers that are related to public policy and administration, collaborative governance, networks, emergency management and decision making in complex environment. Some of his highly cited papers in the fields of disasters, networks and inter-organisations are “Interagency Communication Networks During Emergencies Boundary Spanners in Multiagency Coordination” (Kapucu, 2006), Inter-organisational coordination in extreme events: The World Trade Center attacks, 11 September 2001 (Comfort and Kapucu, 2006), and Inter-organisational coordination in dynamic context: Networks in emergency response management (Kapucu, 2005). Christopher Hawkins is an Assistant Professor in the same school at the UCF working in the field of sustainable development and application of networks analysis to planning and policy. Fernando Rivera is an Associate Professor of Sociology also at UCF, researching on the topic of race, ethnicity, medical sociology and family.

This book offers to examine community resilience from multi-disciplinary approach of: first, public policy and management: policy tools for effective management of planning and response networks and maintaining community partnerships; second, planning and development: planning ensures that hazard planning accommodate community characteristics, while development, hard and soft tools (land use, building codes), can increase resilience and reduce risks; and third behavioural and social network: networks can increase access to information, resources and opportunities. That is vulnerability and resilience of individuals, community are socially bounded, hence race, gender, income is important (p. 10). These three different disciplines indeed reflect the expertise and experiences of the three editors.

The book is organised into three parts, of Introduction of Conceptual Insights and Applications of Resilience (Part I), Taking Action in Uncertain Environments: Connecting resilience to hazards (Part II) and, Improving Community Resilience through Network (Part III). Part I focuses on the need of creating resilient community from a “whole” community perspective. Bevc sets the scene in this part to discuss conceptual development and challenges in applying the concept of community resilience. In Part I in this book, Introduction to conceptual insights and applications of resilience, Bevc proposes that resilience refers to the complex system integrating across multiples scales and dimensions which require the use of system-thinking or a system-science approach in responding to the challenge. There are five chapters in part I which discuss community resilience definitions, social capital, collaborative capacity, resilient rural community. The first chapter proposes the needs for all hazards and whole community perspectives by which community as a whole, that is the entire societal capacity, is needed especially when large-scale disasters or catastrophes exceeds the resources and capability of governments. The whole community is suggested to include families and individuals, local governments, businesses, schools, community-based non-profit organisations, faith-based communities. The paper in chapter 3 is by Rivera and Settembrino who proposes “Sociological disaster community resiliency framework” which focuses on the barriers and facilitators for community resilience from sociological perspectives. The next paper by Kusenbach and Christmann re-evaluate the concept of vulnerability in specific to hurricane hazard with case study in the USA. Chapter 5 is by Gazley who looks at the role of Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters and how their collaborative capacity was developed and sustained. Chapter 6 is on the resilience of rural community with the case study of housing reconstruction following Hurricane Katrina, discussed by Ganapati and colleague. They found that the resilience is influenced by 6 factors of population, housing, employment and income, human and social capital, rural characteristics and disaster damages.

Part II is concerned with planning processes and regulations for disaster resiliency that is bounded by uncertainties from the hazards and disaster impacts themselves. Esnard sets the scene in this part through highlighting the roles of networks in hazard planning. There are five chapters in this part which examine the roles of public and private sectors, networks and collaborative planning, climate change effects on coastal hazards, also case of Japan and Gulf of Mexico. In chapter 7, May suggests that planning for resilience is hindered by unwillingness to act, and multi-level implementation complexities. May hence proposes that these challenges can be overcome through planning partnerships in particular, engagement with industry and professional association. In the following chapter, Hawkins founds that the quality of disaster resiliency plan at the county level in the USA is perceived to be higher when there is high-stakeholder engagement in developing the plan. In chapter 9, a case from Gulf of Mexico in USA examines environmental conditions that can increase community resilience to flood hazards. Deyle and Butler calls for the application of adaptive management and scenario analysis to overcome uncertainty in planning for resilience to coastal hazard. Methods proposed include providing alternative responses or adaptive response strategies, goal achievement matrices. Chapter 11 presents the case from Japan by Rajib Shaw, a Professor from Kyoto University, who have written extensively on resilience issues in particular within developing countries setting. Shaw presents a very unique case of resilience building processes within rural communities in mountain areas in Saijo city. Several documented initiatives include school-based disaster education, fire volunteers and voluntary disaster preparedness organisations.

Finally, part III has seven chapters which explore the issues of framework to measure networks capacity, the need for multi-level framework, mixed-methods and multi-sectoral tools, management capacity, inter-organisation coordination, comparing urban and rural inter-organisations networks. The last chapter discusses emerging research and implication for policy. It discusses the importance of networks in building disaster resilient community. Brown summarises this part highlighting the role of interpersonal and inter-organisational networks for resilience. In chapter 12, Nowell and Steelman examine the role of responder networks within the wildfire context in the US. They proposes a process and outcome performance goals in responder networks, which is largely determined by familiarity and trust, leaderships, community perspective and the availability of communication infrastructure. Another case is the Tohoku Triple disaster in 2011. Comfort and Okada suggest that the scale, size and scope of destruction requires different mode of planning and preparedness, in particular to mobilise inter-organisational and inter-jurisdictional response. They propose five recommendations: first, adopt different mental model of collaborative actions under conditions of uncertainty; second, integrate science into planning to understand risk and monitor threat; third, monitor flows of information and continuous update of changing conditions and be alerted for potential failure; fourth developed networked organisations that is adaptive to changes; and fifth, wide engagement of stakeholders/intersect oral approach. Lemyre and O’Sullivan, in chapter 14, argue the need for multi-level framework, mixed-methods and multi-sectoral tools to enhance community resilience. They suggest that tools to enhance resilience include psychosocial awareness programme, community asset mapping and inter-organisation collaboration. The next chapter is by Waugh who discusses resilience of rural community and places local leadership and collaborative efforts as the key. Chapter 16 is a case study on the emergence of inter-organisational network following the 2011 Van earthquake in Turkey. Celik and Corbacioglu suggest the need for intermediary actors and to increase organisational, technical and cultural capacity. Chapter 17 is another case in the USA which compares the inter-organisational network between rural and urban counties and found that lack of resources hinders the flexibility of the network. The last chapter of the book could be considered the most significant feature of the book by which the editors examines the implications of this research for policy and practice. Here they propose a adaptive resiliency framework (ARF) which place community at the centre of ARF. They propose that community capacity and adaptive capacity is the key to achieve resilience. Kapucu et al. stated that the key element of this framework is integrating learning within all phases of disaster management (mitigation, preparedness, emergency and recovery).

This book adds great contribution to the much needed discussion on how to manage the impacts of disasters from multi-disciplinary perspectives. This book is extremely relevant to policy and offers fresh and valuable insights on experiences of resilience building activities at the local level at its best. The experiences at the local context in the USA show how collaboration at the local level is extremely important and the many facets of challenges for collaboration are identified. This book also offers innovative discussions to the need for net thinking in facing the increasingly deadly, complex and uncertain disasters. The discussion by Comfort and Okada strongly add value to the book in terms of changes needed in planning to build resilience from catastrophic disasters. A slight critique to this book would be the geographical coverage which tends to lean towards the USA, while there are also case study from Japan and Turkey. Cases which explore networks, communication and inter-agency coordination within the setting of resource limited countries and communities will definitely enrich the book:

Disasters are complex in nature […] complex problems require interdisciplinary solutions. In the future, more interdisciplinary, theory-driven, and empirically robust research is needed to fully understand the concept of resiliency.

Above all, the excerpts from page 358 above shows that this book has successfully meet the intended aim of the book.

Reply from the Editor

The review is comprehensive and captures the essence of the book and contributions from the chapter authors. Disaster resilience became a key concept relatively recently. However the concept means different thing to different group of scholars and professional practitioners. The book addresses resilience as a product of an interdependent system governed by a set of collaborative processes and supporting structures embedded within communities. Further, disaster resilience is assumed to be a function of an adaptive governance process that helps develop community capacity through adaptive management and continuous learning, planning and implementation. The adaptive resilience framework developed at the conclusion section of the book suggests that disaster resiliency is differentiated into two categories, engineering resilience and adaptive resilience, after a hazard event. Adaptive management, as a systematic approach for resource sharing, focuses on continuous learning, adaptation, and implementation through partnership of stakeholders in a community.

We would like to further recommend that the book can also be used in graduate courses as a major source in addition to being a reference for researchers in the field and the the framework in the conclusion can be used to further research in disaster resilience in the future.