In such contexts where governance is weak, there
are no real mechanisms to enforce building codes.
In cities like Port-au-Prince, where many were
housed in poor and densely-packed shantytowns
and badly-constructed dwellings, the devastation
has been great and the death toll heavy. All of these
dimensions of vulnerability need to be analysed,
together with communities. The V2R framework
provides the background information and various
methods for doing so.
Within the context of this toolkit, the livelihood
dimension of increasing resilience is largely dealt
with in Tool 6: Integrating Livelihoods, and the
dimension of involving communities in governance
is dealt with particularly in Tool 7: Planning
with the People. In this tool, we will therefore
concentrate on the assessment of hazards and
stresses, and to an extent on how these might
change in future. Vulnerable people often lack a
good understanding of hazards and their associated
risks. If they are to become more resilient, they will
have to develop capacity to analyse and understand
the hazards and stresses that affect their lives.
To achieve this, agencies can work directly with
communities to carry out a systematic vulnerability
analysis, and/or train community leaders to
facilitate community analysis. An analysis of
vulnerabilities can be done in a participatory
way, and can help to identify households within a
community and those most in need of support. For
an example of Participatory Vulnerability Analysis,
see case study 3 in the section Applications.
2 Structural Damage Assessment
The experience of previous disasters has taught us
that buildings can be at risk of damage or collapse
for a number of reasons, the most common of
which are listed in the box below. These are the
kind of issues a damage assessment team will have
to look out for in particular.
Damage assessments should be done in teams
which include representatives of all stakeholders
involved in reconstruction. It is particularly
important for communities to identify their
indigenous knowledge on disaster mitigation. When
it comes to building houses, the starting point is
to learn from how people are building already, and
how they are incorporating specific details to reduce
disaster risk. Where livelihoods are concerned, it
is important to understand the strategies already
in place to cope with other types of crisis. Ideally,
such assessments are to be done by practitioners
visiting settlements, making observations and
having discussions with local builders and small
groups or representatives of different categories
of inhabitants. Their conclusions then need to
be presented and discussed with larger groups of
residents.
Where disasters have affected thousands of
people and large reconstruction programmes are
House destroyed by flooding of the Jugedi river near Khetbari,
Nepal in September 2006. In a disaster risk assessment, this
location would be classified as high-risk.
envisaged, it becomes very difficult to ensure
everybody participates equally in assessments.
Reconstruction agencies may have to work with
representatives of the communities, but they should
ensure that this does not lead to the exclusion of
the opinions of vulnerable groups. Information and
communication technologies (ICTs) can help to
inform and involve larger numbers; e.g. providing
people with cameras or video equipment and a bit
of training can enable them to produce their own
stories of damage and vulnerability. Communication
is discussed in more detail in PCR Tool 9:
Communicating Better Building.
The aim of damage assessments is to find our
why some houses were badly damaged and others
less so; the box to the right indicates some of the
issues that need to be investigated. In addition,
it is important to learn what actions local people
had already taken to protect themselves from
disaster risks. Were these effective? If not, why
not? How could they be improved? Would these
improvements be suitable for the community to
carry out themselves during reconstruction, or
would additional support be needed?
If field workers involved know about similar
scenarios in other locations, where particular
improvements have proven to work well, they
can bring those into the discussion as examples.
However, field workers should take care not to take
on the role of experts and perhaps manipulate
communities towards certain solutions. The
purpose of the damage assessment is to learn why
the damage was caused, and how this could be
mitigated, not to immediately decide how houses
should be reconstructed. Field workers should in
particular be cautious not to suggest too many
technologies that are alien to local residents and
builders, since these would require additional
training, might require materials from elsewhere,
and quite possibly extra funding.
If particular types of houses survived the
disaster well, these can become the model for
future reconstruction. Alternatively, if it is observed
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