Involving the local community is one of the best approaches for prevention and/or mitigation of disaster, and might even include activities such as geo-data collection, map generation, action-plan development and data maintenance. Mapping enables a community to recognise its own resources and capacities, important in changing the “victim and survivor” mindset in relation to hazard; the idea that one must wait passively for rescuers and relief workers to bring help. In the battle against disaster the individual must be shown how the community can act to avoid it; he must be persuaded to participate.
Since the 1990s community-based disaster-risk management (CBDRM), the approach advocated by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) has been evolving, developing recognition of community resources and knowledge and correcting the defects of the top-down approach. CBDRM can also enable people to respond to an emergency situation even before outside help arrives. Sometimes CBDRM is misunderstood to be outsider activity for the benefit of a community; in fact CBDRM must be done by the community itself. A CBDRM process has sequential stages that can build up into a participatory disaster-risk management system, including community selection, rapport-building and understanding the community, risk-assessment and planning, building and training an organisation, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
Participatory Disaster Risk Assessment aims at diagnosing the risks and how people can overcome them, and involves guided assessment of hazard, vulnerability and capacity. Guidance is effected by training in basic concepts and in the role of the community. Community members then characterise the hazards they face; their vulnerabilities and resources, check this exercise by field-work, and map it all. Finally, action plans are developed based on the findings and the map. In this way the community is able to perceive the risks facing it, own the data and understand what it has on the ground to combat hazard. An important caveat is that a community should not be the only stakeholder; local government participation in, for example, training sessions, ensures that officials are aware of the process, the data and its quality, and of any assessments and action plans.
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