Bangladesh University of Professionals

Summary Writing

Disaster Management and Community Planning, and Public

Participation: How to Achieve Sustainable Hazard
Mitigation
Course name: Community-based Disaster Management and Planning
Course Code: DHSM-3107

Submitted to
Irtifa Alam Nabila

Assistant Professor
Department of Disaster and Human Security Management
Faculty of Arts and Social Science
Bangladesh University of Professionals

Submitted by

Tasnim Tabassum Lamya

ID: D18131019
Session: 2017-2018
Department of Disaster and Human Security Management
Bangladesh University of Professionals

S u b m i tt e d o n : 31st March, 2020

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The paper offers first a brief historical overview of disaster management planning.
Then, it reviews Australian and American research findings and show that they need
the field of disaster management to shift its attention from response and recovery to
sustainable hazard mitigation. After that, the disaster management process must
include public participation at the local decision-making level in order to have a
successfully executed mitigative strategies. The paper closes with a case study of
California's Portola Valley, which demonstrates that when public participation is
integrated into disaster management planning and community planning, the result is
sustainable hazard mitigation.

1. Historical Overview of Disaster Management Planning: The ground of disaster

management initiated during the Cold War, when planning for nuclear war and the
building of bomb shelters was encouraged. Not surprisingly, there appears to be a
relationship between the degree to which communities accept disaster management
planning and the degree to which they experience disasters: the greater the exposure
to disasters, the greater the interest in disaster management. It is recognized that while
a top-down policy is needed, it is really the local-level bottom-up policy that provides
the impetus for the implementation of mitigation strategies and a successful disaster
management process. Second, the shift from reactive to proactive measures moves
disaster management from a focus on response and recovery activities to a focus on
community planning (e.g. land-use policies, floodplain management, etc.). Fourth,
emphasis on working and relating with communities puts a strong onus on disaster
managers and community planners to involve the public in their planning. Given the
obvious links between sustainable hazard mitigation and community planning, it
behooves us to address the links between the latter and disaster management planning.

2. Integrating Disaster Management Planning and Community Planning:

Community planning and disaster management planning are rooted in very different
ideologies, although they do share some common features: both have been conducted
in isolation from the community; both are concerned with the physical community
(e.g. buildings, infrastructure, etc.).as well as the human community; both are based in
local government; and both take a predictive approach to planning. Mitigation
activities occur in all phases of disaster management and are usually conducive to
cooperation and coordination between the disaster manager and the community
planner. The challenge, therefore, is twofold: to integrate the processes of community

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planning and disaster management planning so that both are working towards the
same goals, and to encourage a high degree of community participation. As is evident,
both this particular community planning tradition and the disaster management
tradition espoused in the Safe Community Program stress the importance of public
participation.

3. Why Include the Public: According to the International Federation of Red Cross
and Red Crescent Societies, all disaster research in the past decade has clearly
indicated that community members in disaster-stricken areas already knew of both the
risks and the remedies: "The gap has been in the political will to apply remedies prior
to full-scale disaster and to commit resources to this vital developmental need rather
than, for example, to the building up of a sophisticated armory". The disadvantaged
(e.g. the poor, the sick, the marginalized) need to be able to gain access to information
about, and to have a say in the development of, mitigative strategies.

4. How to Ensure Public Participation: To decide when a consensus-based

approach to public participation should be used, Dorcey and McDaniels refer to the
contingent approach developed by Thomas , based on the work of Vroom and Yetton
and Vroom and Jago. While the use of an advisory committee may be appropriate for
communities that contain a number of interested individuals and groups, it may not be
appropriate for very small communities where there is little public interest in disaster
management.

5. The Portola Valley: A Case of Fully Integrated Approach to Disaster

Management: On 20 July 1964 residents voted to incorporate Portola Valley, a town
of approximately nine square miles located south of San Francisco, so that they could
control its development and so better preserve and protect its natural and diverse
environment. The public was very much concerned with maintaining the character of
the community and of the open spaces, which included brush, trees, hills and steep
mountains. There public participation in combination with both disaster management
planning and community planning results in sustainable hazard mitigation.

6. Conclusion: This paper has claimed that integrate disaster management and
community planning is needed for the mentioned shift to happen. It is also clear that
any successful approach to sustainable hazard mitigation must be participatory in

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nature and must be linked with the local public participation and sustainable hazard
mitigation decision-making level. As is demonstrated in the Portola Valley case study.