The divine hierarchy: the social and institutional elements of vulnerability in south India

Studies over the last twenty years show that understanding the social and economic forces that govern societies and create vulnerability should have the same emphasis as understanding the physical causes of vulnerability. This enquiry investigates what social networks and institutions are available (created or imposed) to people that enable them to cope with large scale crises, such as tropical cyclones, and ‘everyday’ problems such as poverty and illness. The social institutions prevalent in villages in coastal Andhra Pradesh, south India, have been assessed regarding which variables appear to be the most and least successful in contributing to the reduction of people’s vulnerability and aiding the coping mechanisms of individuals and households.Using a mixed methods approach, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from over 300 respondents in twelve villages, enabling an assessment to be made of each respondent’s access to resources as indicators of levels of poverty, marginalisation, resilience and social power. Data was obtained using questionnaires, village cartographic surveys, sociograms and semi-structured interviews. The sociograms used throughout this research were developed during the fieldwork. They were adapted to suit the requirements of the research focus and thereby facilitate the assessment of the types and strengths of social networks used by the respondents in both ‘everyday’ and ‘crisis’ situations. A contextual analysis was conducted to locate concepts such as ‘community’ and ‘risk’ within the discourse appropriate to the respondents. From this analysis it became apparent that the village level respondents perceive risk in terms of recurring ‘everyday’ occurrences such as low crop yields and the lack of basic needs, and not high impact but infrequently occurring events such as tropical cyclones or floods. The village level respondents, government officials and NGO employees typically perceive the concept of ‘community’ as defined by caste classifications. The main variable explaining access to resources is caste. Caste is the dominant social institution that influences social networks and hence (with poverty) levels of vulnerability. This is because it not only influences levels of vulnerability directly, through levels of poverty, but also restricts the ability of some respondents to change their circumstances through enduring caste-defined inequalities with regards to accessing the resources that might help them to reduce their levels of vulnerability. Given this finding, and because caste is not predominately an economic phenomenon, vulnerability reduction initiatives that focus on economic advancement alone are unlikely to usurp patterns of caste discrimination and thereby are unlikely to reduce endemic levels of vulnerability for the most vulnerable members of society: they are treating symptoms, not causes. In contrast, social networks are also important: while the ‘lower’ castes are the most marginalised, powerless and poorest members of the case study areas they attempt to address this by accessing socio-economic resources that can, and marginally do, increase their resilience to frequent small scale crises, typically via social networks with informal social institutions such as NGOs, CBOs and kinship networks. In view of the dearth in empirical evidence associated to inequalities related to caste in rural India, this thesis adds to the limited contemporary evidence that suggests that caste defined disparities persist. Consequently, practitioners involved in vulnerability reduction need to gain a better understanding of the communities and the ‘political realities’ in which they operate, so that future interventions will be better targeted and ultimately be more appropriate and sustainable that they have been in the past

Household and governmental perceptions of risk: implications for the appropriateness of housing provision in South India

Disasters are increasing, affecting more people globally and imposing larger economic losses for affected areas. Typically, the poorest and most marginalised members of society are disproportionately affected by such events, impinging upon their ability to cope with everyday life and improve their socio-economic status. The outputs from a three-year project in Andhra Pradesh are presented, providing a context specific, but nonetheless important, insight into how risk perceptions can have an impact upon local development. By assessing the disparities between existing risks and the risk perceptions of householders, government and non-governmental officials, evidence is provided that questions the day-to-day suitability of the risk responses. The case study highlights limited risk management strategies due to inadequate availability of insurance cover in the villages while ultimately illustrating the pitfalls of ill-conceived and overly technocratic approaches to housing development

Built-in resilience through disaster risk reduction: operational issues

It has been argued that the broad range of people responsible for the delivery, operation and maintenance of the built environment need to become more proactively involved in making the built environment resilient to a wide range of known and unforeseen hazards and threats. Accordingly, the (actual and potential) roles of a wide range of stakeholders associated with the integration of Disaster Risk Reduction into the (re-)development of the built environment are examined. A review of literature, government data and interviews with key stakeholders in England, highlights that despite regulatory intentions to increase local resilience through the use of public and private sector stakeholders, a number of structural and operational obstacles exist. A range of strategies can be employed to overcome these obstacles: revisions to building codes, tightening planning policy, improving professional training, clarifying roles and missions, enabling complementary bottom-up and top-down approaches, and the provision of good practice guidance about the broad range of structural and non-structural risk reduction measures. Many of the operational challenges are non-structural and require a coherent, overarching strategy: changing and aligning the social understandings and practices in civil society, government and building environment stakeholders

DESURBS deliverable 2.2: tools for the assessment of security threats

This report constitutes Deliverable 2.2 of the FP7 Security Program research project ‘Designing Safer Urban Spaces’ (DESURBS, Grant Agreement no. 261652). The purpose of this report is to highlight the examples of open access online security and resilience approaches and tools and key documents that support decision making in regard to the Integrated Security and Resilience (ISR) framework (WP2.3), the structure of which has been incorporated into all the WP2 deliverables. The report presents information on the approaches mentioned above, found during the course of an extensive literature review, and from data collection that has been undertaken in the Nottingham (UK) and Jerusalem (Israel) case study cities of the project. This deliverable demonstrates that there is a great number of tools and documents available online, however the majority of them are context-specific and can only provide partial information that can be useful in disaster risk management. It has been identified that many of the tools are multi-hazard and can be used in conjunction with international documents and guidelines. There is however a lack of open-access tools for specific hazards, in particular industrial accidents and ground movements. This is due to a high specificity of these events and a necessity to use high-tech equipment for identification of these hazards and their mitigation

DESURBS deliverable 2.3: generic integrated security and resilience decision support framework

This report constitutes Deliverable 2.3 of the FP7 Security Program research project ‘Designing Safer Urban Spaces’ (DESURBS, Grant Agreement no. 261652). The geographic focus of DESURBS is international, but with specific attention to two case study city locations: Nottingham (UK), and Jerusalem (Israel). This report on Work Package (WP) 2 of the DESURBS project, which draws on these case study cities (and countries), is chronologically the third deliverable of this work package. WP2 encompasses the development of an integrated security and resilience (ISR) design framework, specifically for identifying urban vulnerabilities and improving urban spaces with respect to security threats. It is informed by: • identifying the public and private sector stakeholders responsible for the management of security risks and understanding their roles and interconnectivities (WP 2.1) • assessing security and resilience approaches suitable for urban spaces (WP 2.2) • consolidating security and resilience approaches suitable for urban spaces (WPs 2.3 and 2.4

Disaster risk reduction and 'built-in' resilience: towards overarching principles for construction practice

The emerging emphasis on disaster risk reduction has broadened the range of experts whose knowledge must be garnered to resolve complex socio-technical challenges. This paper examines the role and position of the construction sector for addressing these concerns. Specifically, it examines the recursive nature of practices within the built environment, which can be seen as deeply ingraining fragmented approaches to the development process. These, in turn, render the industry a difficult arena within which to enact structural and cultural change. Based on a wide body of literature on resiliency a set of overarching principles are proffered to help inform efforts to overcome some of the barriers to creating a more resilient built environment. It is argued that these principles offer a point of departure for embedding resilience considerations at both project and institutional levels, although real change would demand challenging some of the conventions that currently underpin construction development

DESURBS draft deliverable 2.1 (d2.1c): roles of key stakeholders

This report constitutes Deliverable 2.1 of the FP7 Security Program research project ‘Designing Safer Urban Spaces’ (DESURBS, Grant Agreement no. 261652). This report on Work Package (WP) 2 of the DESURBS project is chronologically the first deliverable of this work package. The purpose of the deliverable is to report on the identification of public and private sector stakeholders responsible for the management of security risks, as well as understanding of their roles and interconnectivities. Understanding in regard to the case study city of Nottingham is significant, and has enabled the initial creation and development of the ISR framework for WPs 2.3 and 2.4, the structure for which has been incorporated into this deliverable and that for WP 2.2. A field trip to Jerusalem in January 2012 has led to a significant increase in understanding regarding the case study city, and has formed a base from which further data collection will be undertaken. In addition to that, interviews conducted by Partner 8 provided significant insight into the roles of the stakeholders and allowed comparison with the UK (Nottingham) data

Managing disaster risk and resilience in the UK: Response vs. prevention in policy and practice

Managing disaster risk and resilience in the UK: Response vs. prevention in policy and practic

International perspectives on urban resilience

International perspectives on urban resilienc