Community Disaster Vulnerability: Theory, Research, and Practice

Disaster vulnerability is rapidly increasing on a global scale, particularly for those populations which are the historical clients of the social work profession. These populations include the very young and very old, the poor, ethnic and racial minorities, and those with physical or mental disabilities. Social workers are increasingly providing services in disasters during response and recovery periods, and are using community interventions to reduce disaster vulnerability.

There is a need for a cogent theory of vulnerability and research that addresses improved community disaster practice and community resilience. Community Disaster Vulnerability and Resilience provides a unifying theoretical framework backed by research which can be translated into knowledge for effective practice in disasters. Chapter 2 Vulnerability Theory. Chapter 3 The Development Perspective on Vulnerability. Chapter 4 Resilience Complements Vulnerability.

Chapter 6 Linear Accounts of Vulnerability. Chapter 7 Vulnerability Described Geographically. Chapter 8 Vulnerability Described Through Networks. Chapter 9 Vulnerability Explored and Explained Dynamically. The field has given very little attention to slow-onset disasters brought on by armed conflict Dynes, Slow-onset disasters created by violence remain understudied and are not connected with the sustainable development debate.

Slow-onset, conflict-driven disasters have been referred to as complex political emergencies or CPEs Christopolis et al. CPEs frequently lead to displaced populations that are caught up in ongoing conflicts that often develop slowly.

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Recent examples during the past decade include the collapse of Yugoslovia, genocide in the Sudan, and places such as El Salvador that experience recurrent, rapid-onset disasters that take place in the midst of conflict. Of the 43 major armed conflicts throughout the world during the s, 17 took place in Africa Addison, Since , approximately 70 million people have become international refugees, nearly 40 million people have struggled with starvation, and more than 20 percent of the population has been displaced in 15 developing countries Addison, They experience a profound, intractable type of conflict, one of acute polarization.

In these cases, ethnic and nationalistic claims eclipse social and economic equity claims at the local level. Governance is perceived by at least one ethnic community as either illegitimate or structurally incapable of producing fair outcomes for subordinate ethnic groups. Given the nature and location of CPEs, they have not generated much interest among the disaster research community in developed countries. A central justification behind the need for new theories of human response to CPEs is that existing theories are not useful in understanding these events. Theories of human response have been borrowed unreflectively from natural disasters and applied to the very different phenomena that occur in the context of CPEs Green and Ahmed, Theories of the disaster cycle, for example, are not relevant when it is impossible to differentiate between impact and recovery.

The idea of a linear relief to a development continuum for natural disasters assumes that there are clearly defined roles for various organizations in the humanitarian aid delivery system. That is, there is some certainty as to who should do what when the disaster is over. In sum, the preceding discussion identified three major obstacles to the integration of sustainable development with disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts: Improvement in our knowledge of the causes and consequences of these obstacles is critical to create long-range sustainability strategies that achieve disaster resiliency.

Use of a more inclusive definition of disaster is only a first step. As suggested also in Chapter 1 see Figure 1. The greatest challenge to promoting disaster resiliency is to adapt strategies that map with the great variation of types of community vulnerabilities. Communities of refugees, indigenous people, women, children, minorities, and others within a society have different needs and opportunities for developing sustainable, disaster-resilient places. They vary in their capacity to deal with disasters as well as the strength of their ties with outside aid delivery systems.

Because all social systems have very different vulnerabilities and capabilities, they have different strategies to cope with vulnerability. Simply equating vulnerability with poverty has led to a process of merely categorizing beneficiaries, rather than analyzing their situations. Without such analysis, risk tends to be overshadowed by a pre-existing economic development agenda. Various conceptual models in development planning attempt to specify the key dimensions of effectiveness of aid delivery systems that are applicable to disaster contexts e.

As illustrated in Figure 6. Efforts are successful when the disaster mitigation and preparedness program is responsive to household needs and builds the strength of organizations so that they are capable of achieving program goals. Adapted from Korten Subsequent research has illuminated the important relationships among needs, program, and organizational capacity, concluding that the performance of an organization is a function of fit among these dimensions e. In formulating a model of how community capability and aid delivery strategies influence the achievement of disaster resiliency, the committee draws on several explanations of governance and social capital for understanding collective action to solve public issues.

A useful approach for understanding how these factors affect disaster resiliency utilizes the concepts of local horizontal and vertical integration first introduced by urban sociologist Roland Warren This chapter also draws on Berke et al. Finally, emerging concepts of social capital are used to improve our understanding of the underlying dimensions of horizontal and vertical integration in the context of disasters and development. The idea of social capital can be used to develop a more refined definition of these links and a deeper understanding of how they are formed.

Social capital has recently been given prominence by the United Nations Development Programme, which set forth the concept as a central guidance framework for using aid to mobilize communities to deal with disasters and underdevelopment UNDP, Social capital is a general construct that links concepts that sociologists, political scientists, and community development planners have been defining and testing for nearly two decades, including citizen engagement, interpersonal trust, and collective action Coleman, ; Putnam, ; Briggs, , Dynes, Engagement places people in a network of local social relationships, which affects interpersonal trust.

Trust, in turn, affects collective action and ultimately both individual and social benefits. Social capital is distinguished from other constructs, such as social networks and organizational capital Rohe, Social networks represent patterns of interaction, but the social capital construct is more expansive. It embraces characteristics and consequences of interaction, including how interaction leads to trust and, ultimately, to collective action. Further, the interactions among organizations are sometimes thought of as social capital or organizational capital , but organizational interaction and social capital are not equivalent.

A nongovernmental organization charged with disaster mitigation responsibilities may have many community contacts, but if people are not participating and not attending meetings, the contacts do not benefit the community. Clearly, organizational interaction is not a sufficient indicator of social capital.

In keeping with the disaster context, a community with a high degree of horizontal integration i. Stronger networks provide greater opportunity for creating interpersonal trust. The community is a viable, locally based problem-solving entity. Its organizations and individuals not only have an interest in solving public problems, but also tend to have frequent and sustained interaction, believe in one another, and work together to build consensus and act collectively.

Thus, local populations have the opportunity to define and communicate their needs, mediate disagreements, and participate in local organizational decision making. Further, strong integration among local organizations can enhance the work of external organizations through use of field staff and their knowledge of local circumstances Suparamaniam and Dekker, As a result, mitigation practices and disaster preparedness programs are more likely to fit the needs and capacities of the community.

A community with a low degree of horizontal integration has limited civic engagement and a weakly knit social network. Interaction is low among government agencies and social subgroups with an interest in collec-. The measures on Figure 6.

A more comprehensive approach to measuring social capital, which combines quantitative and qualitative research methods, has been developed by the World Bank. It is applicable to diverse social and cultural contexts Krishna and Shrader, Adapted from Rohe Interpersonal trust is more likely to be low as people view ideas and actions of others with suspicion.

The community thus lacks an ability to act with collective unity to solve local problems. Consequently, the fit between aid delivery programs and the needs and capacities of local people is likely to be weak. A community with a high degree of vertical integration has a relatively high number of ties through engagement with larger political, social, and economic institutions.

Vertical integration helps expands networks with these institutions and creates trust between local people and larger institutions that are important in taking effective collective action. Moreover, issues of local concern have a greater chance of being communicated to central authorities.

The extent to which vertical integration is beneficial relates strongly to the strength of horizontal relationships. However, when the community has strong horizontal integration in the face of weak vertical integration, there is likely to be tension as communities attempt to exert control over external interventions that are inconsistent with local needs. Weak vertical integration between communities and outside organizations can create severe problems when combined with a weak system of horizontal integration. In this situation, knowledge and degree of trust of the intentions, procedures, requirements, and benefits of outside programs are likely to be weak.

Consequently, the likelihood of external programs fitting local needs and capacities to undertake collective action to advance disaster resilience initiatives is very low. In societies with weak state administrative and judicial structures, notably in developing countries, weak vertical ties dominate and undermine formation of horizontal relations.

The absence of laws and contracts that are enforced by the state is a precondition of the emergence of a patron-client system Putnam, ; Krishna, Political patronage, bribes, and unpredictable use of sanctions generates uncertainty in agreements and mistrust. Lack of security and trust, ensured neither by the state nor by civic norms and networks, translates to powerful top-down patron systems. Vertical relations are defined by coercive authority and dependence, with little or no horizontal solidarity among equals. Organized criminality is frequently a result of the pattern of horizontal mistrust, vertical exploita-.

This poor state of vertical relations between patrons and clients or local people percolates throughout the social ladder and creates stagnation in economic development and a general reluctance to cooperate. Based on the conceptualization of Berke et al. As noted, Berke et al. A Type I community is ideally suited for effective collective action.

It possesses strong vertical and horizontal integration. It has well-developed bridging capital with external aid programs, while it has high levels of social capital that will allow it to exert influence in using aid in ways that meet local needs and capacities. A Type II community represents an autonomous, relatively isolated community with few vertical ties—an increasingly rare occurrence in the twenty-first century. While it has strong social capital, it suffers from a lack of bridging capital in terms of knowledge of and interaction with important external resources.

Lacking a viable level of social capital, it has less chance to be able to influence the direction of development efforts and define how they are tied to disaster resiliency. Thus, it is more likely that such efforts will not be consistent with local needs and capacities. A Type III community has the advantage of at least having bridging capital with external aid programs. A Type IV community is confronted by significant obstacles to undertaking advancement of disaster resiliency initiatives as it is devoid of access to external resources.

Community Disaster Vulnerability : Michael J. Zakour :

However, if vertical channels are activated, it still lacks a viable level of social capital for effectively making collective decisions on how to use external aid or influencing the goals and policy directions of development programs. Moreover, Type III communities and especially Type IV communities are likely to experience many of the conditions of CPEs that are in a constant state of conflict and extreme polarization. To demonstrate the conceptual and practical significance of this parsimonious model of horizontal and vertical integration, three case studies of local experiences in linking disasters to development issues aimed at supporting disaster resiliency see Sidebar on linking development to disaster resiliency supported by the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program [NEHRP].

The case studies demonstrate how horizontal and vertical integration or lack of it has influenced disaster resiliency outcomes. These cases cut across domestic and international settings as well as developed and developing societies. There are several unanswered questions about the causes of social capital and its transformation across different types of communities.

Sometimes it is incorrectly assumed that strong social interactions fostered by active civic engagement programs will enhance interpersonal trust. In this case, emphasis is placed on the structural dimension of social capital i. It is not just the frequency of interactions, but the sentiments, actions, and reactions of participants to the content of the interaction. There may be high levels of interaction but minimal trust or even mistrust if the content creates suspicion and ill will.

A patron-client system that is fraught with corruption is an obvious case. Suspicion and mistrust also often occur when projects are initiated by outside organizations and local people have doubts about the underlying motives of these organizations. Resident distrust and cynicism may increase if residents are simply informed of a particular mitigation policy but not involved in the policy decision.

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Even in communities with high levels of engagement and interaction, government officials may not be listening and acting in response to what stakeholders are saying. Vertical integration was moderate, but horizontal integration was very weak. After hurricane landfall, a collaborative recovery effort evolved between an international nongovernmental organization from Canada, an intermediary NGO from the region with long-standing external ties to foreign donor organizations, and a local community action group. The Canadian NGO sought to provide housing recovery assistance after Hugo by establishing a cooperative arrangement with the intermediary NGO, which had been involved in community development work in Streatham Village for several years before the disaster.

The arrangement involved the Canadian NGO providing funds to the intermediary for undertaking reconstruction activities in Streatham. The intermediary, in turn, worked with the community action group to initiate a new housing assistance program. The intermediary NGO trained local people and provided funds to temporarily employ local people to undertake reconstruction activities. The Canadian NGO also supplied the program with building materials and logistics for transporting the materials. The accomplishments of this program were substantial, with numerous training workshops on carpentry and structural strengthening techniques, 20 homes rebuilt, and many others were repaired.

Of greatest significance were the long-term development accomplishments. The local visibility and sense of importance of the community action group were raised considerably due to its reconstruction work. The voluntary participation of local people in group activities also increased. Santa Cruz County, California. Horizontal integration was high, and the county had a high degree of citizen and group political activity and experience in seeking responses from government. Much of this activity can be traced to the occurrence of three major disasters in the county in the s.

These disasters induced the county government to develop new partnerships and capabilities with its citizens. Specifically, a cooperative association of households, known as the Neighborhood Survival Network NSN , was established to organize citizen self-help in future disasters. After the Loma Prieta disaster, this high degree of horizontal integration was vital in aiding the overlooked minority and low-income population in rural areas of the county and providing a basis for increasing vertical integration.

When the Federal Emergency. FEMA officials realized that NSN could use its well-established ties with local people to assess needs and distribute assistance. The City of Invercargill with a population of about 50, experienced a devastating flood disaster in After the disaster, horizontal integration was strengthened as a collaborative recovery effort evolved among stakeholders and public officials in the city and was further reinforced with stronger vertical integration between the city and the national government.

During the disaster aftermath, there was consensus among city leaders and stakeholder groups to build long-term risk management considerations into the reconstruction of devastated areas of the city. The National Water and Soil Conservation Authority NWSCA took a fresh approach to flood mitigation by developing a cooperative arrangement with the city focused on long-range planning, rather than the traditional approach of structural mitigation that supports floodplain redevelopment.

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The arrangement involved NWSCA providing recovery subsidies to the city in return for city adoption of a long-term-risk planning approach. In , a comprehensive approach was adopted by the city, making Invercargill a national leader. Planning measures included rezoning of hazardous land, relocation of damaged properties, hazard disclosure requirements in future real estate transactions, and minimum building elevation levels. As the memory of the disaster faded, local commitment waned, and without national support, local consensus for long-range risk management planning disintegrated.

The city reverted to a strategy of allowing floodplain development with levee and dam protection. Thus, vertical integration declined, which stimulated the decline of horizontal integration. There are other unanswered questions involving the development and continuation of community social capital. How can high levels of social capital in one phase be sustained across phases? Given the rising losses from disasters, it is important to improve our understanding of how to sustain the peaks of social capital and limit its dips across phases.

Dynes also indicates that research on social capital theory has not been applied to any of the phases of the disaster policy cycle, which offer classic situations involving collective action for mutual benefit. Second, how does engagement among different groups impact trust? That is, does it matter who is engaged with whom? Racial, ethnic, gender, age, and income differences may be an important factor.

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Moreover, unequal power among participants, such as traditionally powerful real estate interests or corrupt patrons in a weak state structure versus low income residents, may create mistrust, because the less powerful see no benefit in their participation. More research is needed on the types of civic engagement techniques, and on the nature and content of the engagement to understand how they affect trust among groups and institutions. Third, the question of vertical integration is also relevant.

Is horizontal integration sufficient to create effective social capital, or do members also need to be engaged with external organizations? If external organizations are important, what role should they play? One can contend that different dimensions of social capital influence community capability to cope differently, especially across phases of the disaster policy cycle. Given the multiple dimensions of social capital, prior research suggests that some dimensions may be more powerful than others by type of social domain.

For example, Messner et al. However, 11 other dimensions e. Fourth, what does the role of the historical social and political context play in framing how people think about engagement or trust? Social capital can be influenced strongly by these local contexts. Can social capital be changed, or is it more strongly influenced by these historical contexts? In particular, context might play a strong role in deeply polarized, conflict-ridden societies experiencing CPEs. What roles should community development planners and emergency managers play to build social capital in these situations?

Collaborative international research is important for at least two reasons. First, as discussed earlier in this chapter and in Chapter 2 , developing countries account for the preponderance of human losses from disasters on a global scale, and these losses are expected to increase in future decades. The National Science Board , in discussing the need for collaborative research links between developing and developed countries, specifically mentions the potential for science and technology to address the problem of natural and human-induced disasters.

Second, there is great potential for collaborative international research to advance knowledge on the social science dimensions of hazards and disasters, particularly through cross-cultural comparisons. This potential remains largely unrealized. Bates and Peacock Disasters are relatively rare events in any given geographical or cultural setting.

Therefore, the accumulation of knowledge on disasters as social. The major lesson from the May et al. Thus, effective external programs would represent a mix of the two approaches. While single case studies can help formulate hypotheses on what factors promote community disaster resilience, cross-cultural case research designs can allow for the testing of these hypotheses to uncover unique and interactive effects of these factors.

Comparative research must involve international collaboration because this type of research can be very expensive and requires in-country investigators who are sensitive to local cultural contexts. Although it was traumatic and caused untold human suffering, the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami disaster offers a unique opportunity to apply multiple case designs that capture relationships among horizontal integration, vertical integration, and dimensions of social capital.

This led to annual exchanges between faculty and graduate students, as well as creating opportunities to conduct additional collaborative studies in the disaster field. Other studies have also shed light on successful collaboration. Bates and Peacock developed and validated a standardized index of living conditions the Domestic Assets Scale for allowing comparisons of disaster impacts across cultures and over time. This study, an outgrowth of earthquake investigations in Guatemala, involved collaboration between researchers in the United States and Peru, Mexico, Turkey, Yugoslavia, and Italy.

Collaboration between researchers made it possible to conduct cross-national comparisons of higher-level government policies and local government hazard mitigation plans that fostered tight control for differences in. The Memorandum of agreement calls for collaboration between the two centers in the conduct of research as well as the exchange of faculty and graduate students. Since that time the staff of the two centers have conducted faculty exchanges, approximately annually, in which researchers discuss their current work and identify opportunities for knowledge transfer.

Recent survey research on landslide evacuation in Taiwan has adapted a questionnaire used at HRRC to study hurricane evacuations. This makes it possible to perform cross-national comparisons in household response to disasters that more tightly control for differences in governmental systems and local circumstances e. In addition to knowledge transfer at the faculty level, this collaboration has also been successful in producing new scholars because two graduate students who studied at HRRC have returned to faculty positions in Taiwan.

The success of this program to date can be attributed to a number of factors. First, the initial attraction of the two centers was based on the similarity of hazard interests. Third, there is sponsor support for this collaboration: NSF supports international collaboration for U. A significant outcome of this research was the development of a mitigation plan quality evaluation index that has been applied in subsequent studies by various investigators in New Zealand and the United States Ericksen et al.

The success of these initiatives results from several factors. First, individual investigators and their hazard research centers had prior experience in cross-national research, thus recognizing the mutual benefit of such. Second, sustained sources of independent funding created continuity that strengthened the partnerships.

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Third, the sponsors of these studies recognized the importance of international collaboration and the need for sustained multi-year research projects, as well as post-study exchanges of findings. Productive international collaborations such as these exemplars are relatively rare due to a number of challenges. One challenge is the difficulty of making cross-cultural comparisons.

For example, different countries have different reporting practices for even seemingly straightforward data on disaster deaths. Looking at households displaced by disaster requires understanding such issues as household structure and housing norms that differ between cultures. The need to develop standardized methods for data collection that are applicable across cultures is therefore a central and complex problem in and of itself see also Chapter 7. DesInventar is software for the collection and classification of spatially referenced data on disaster occurrence and loss that can be used without specialized programming skills.

A second challenge is the need to identify appropriate research counterparts. As discussed in Chapter 9 , the social science hazards and disaster research community is small, even in the United States, which can be considered a world leader in this area. Research on hazards and disasters in the United States is dominated by natural scientists and engineers in terms of both personnel and resources. Social scientists who study disasters in these countries are often not well connected to these other organizations.

Experience has shown that identifying appropriate research counterparts and developing relationships with them are essential to successful international collaboration.

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The project grew out of the Japanese experience a few years earlier with the Kobe earthquake, which killed more than 6, residents and caused billions of dollars in losses. EQTAP, which completed its work in March , was innovative in a number of important respects, proceeding in a manner seldom seen in the research community. It was extensively multilateral, involving research collaborators in 14 different countries, including China, the Philippines, Peru, Chile, Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, the United States, and Mexico in addition to Japan.

It was also multidisciplinary, involving investigators from earthquake engineering, the earth sciences, and the social sciences. A common risk management model originally developed in New Zealand and Australia was used as a mechanism to further the integration of project activities, which included research on such topics as hazard and vulnerability assessment, structural mitigation, and urban disaster planning. Joint case study activities centered in Manila and periodic workshops were also used for this purpose.

EQTAP was also unique in that the research team was expected not only to develop new knowledge, technologies and procedures for risk reduction but also to identify and work with stakeholders in the Asia-Pacific region, such as practitioners and local decision makers, who were potential users of project outputs. A monitoring and assessment panel that included international experts was appointed to begin overseeing the evaluation of the project two years before its completion.

In its final assessment, the panel described EQTAP as highly innovative and reasonably successful given the challenges it faced as a multilateral and multidisciplinary effort, especially since it involved integrating engineering, physical science, and social science disciplines while addressing the needs of stakeholders in many different countries. This chapter has related findings from empirical studies to a conceptual model of disaster risk and development in an effort to identify the contributions and weaknesses of international research on disasters.

Scholarship on the links between disaster risk and development has made distinctive contributions to improving the understanding of disaster-resilient communities. The conceptual writings and empirical research highlighted above have provided a basis for rethinking the role of disaster risk in development activities. Research shows that robust institutional performance, manifested by strong horizontal ties within communities and vertical ties between communities and external aid institutions, is related to policy choices that encourage social capital wherein the elements of civic engagement, social networks, and trust are high.

These conditions are likely to foster strong levels of collective action where there is a high degree of fit among aid program design, local needs, and capacities of assisting organizations.

Community Disaster Vulnerability : Theory, Research, and Practice

Further research is needed to test these empirically grounded hypotheses. Moreover, as discussed above, many unanswered questions remain about the efficacy and formation of social capital. In disaster contexts dealing with armed conflict, for example, other complementary conceptual models may be needed.