I attended a seminar on the “Addressing social cohesion in urban humanitarian response” organised by the Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action (ALNAP) recently, and it tied in nicely with my MSc thesis, which was about community resilience in face of disasters.
The speakers argued that social cohesion is one of the most fundamental characteristics to maintain after the onset of the disaster. Social cohesions can easily breakdown if recovery is slow due to complexity in providing perceived basic needs such as water, sanitation and shelter, and it would be too late to start building them back.
In my previous research for my Masters thesis, I have also learnt that along with an increase in social cohesion, and a consequent increase sense of belonging within the community, there will also be an increase in community disaster resilience, which, according to UNISDR’s definition, is the community’s ability to “resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner”. Thus social cohesion is an important characteristic that should not be disregarded in planning disaster response.
-------------
Reference: Ayyub BM. Systems resilience for multihazard environments: Definition, metrics, and valuation for decision making. Risk Analysis. 2013.
The speakers argued that social cohesion is one of the most fundamental characteristics to maintain after the onset of the disaster. Social cohesions can easily breakdown if recovery is slow due to complexity in providing perceived basic needs such as water, sanitation and shelter, and it would be too late to start building them back.
In my previous research for my Masters thesis, I have also learnt that along with an increase in social cohesion, and a consequent increase sense of belonging within the community, there will also be an increase in community disaster resilience, which, according to UNISDR’s definition, is the community’s ability to “resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner”. Thus social cohesion is an important characteristic that should not be disregarded in planning disaster response.
-------------
Reference: Ayyub BM. Systems resilience for multihazard environments: Definition, metrics, and valuation for decision making. Risk Analysis. 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment