Measuring Disaster Resilience at Community Level and Exploring the Prospects of Revitalizing Communities Coalescing Disaster Risk

Abstract

Increasing the efficiency of disaster response, discouraging development in vulnerable areas and increasing the resiliency of community towards disasters are the three major ways of dealing with disaster risk reduction and mitigation. The paper focuses on the third method of enhancing disaster resilience at community level where community in the broader sense includes family, neighborhoods, panchayats, towns and cities. Though this is the most difficult one as the factors contributing to the increased or diminished capacity of a community to resist, absorb or restore the pre-disaster state has to be measured, evaluated, benchmarked and also assessed and compared across space and time. Several international organizations have put enormous effort and have devoted abundant resources in building resilient communities. Investing in Disaster Risk Reduction is one of the main thrust among the four of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR). The application of resilience can lead to transformation of communities as the concept of resilience can encompass different disciplines with same purpose. A resilient community can be built by revitalizing its pillars (Social, Economic, Environmental and institutional), likewise revitalization projects also helps in building up a resilient community, which has well been exemplified in various cases where different strategies of revitalization has led to disaster resilience of communities. Enhancing the disaster resilience of a community or revitalizing a community, both requires political will, strong leadership and institutional capacity. The paper concludes by establishing that coalescing disaster risk into development activities contributes to long term endurance, resurgence, resilience and revitalization of the community.