Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation
Transcript Of Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation
www.gov.uk/defra
Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation
Rapid Evidence Assessment
February 2014
A report of research carried out by Collingwood Environmental Partnership, on behalf of the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs Authors: Twigger-Ross, C., Kashefi, E., Weldon, S., Brooks, K., Deeming, H., Forrest, S., Fielding, J., Gomersall, A., Harries, T., McCarthy, S., Orr, P., Parker, D., and Tapsell, S (2014) Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation: Rapid Evidence Assessment. London: Defra
© Crown copyright 2014 Copyright in the typographical arrangement and design rests with the Crown. This publication (excluding the logo) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided that it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright with the title and source of the publication specified. The views expressed in this document are not necessarily those of Defra. Its officers, servants or agents accept no liability whatsoever for any loss or damage arising from the interpretation or use of the information, or reliance on views contained herein.
Contents
Executive Summary...........................................................................................................1
Introduction ......................................................................................................................1 Aims and purpose of the REA ..........................................................................................1 Key points ........................................................................................................................2 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 7
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................9
2. Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) Aims and Research Questions ...................11
Aims of the REA .............................................................................................................11 Research questions........................................................................................................12 Choosing a focus for the REA ........................................................................................14
3. Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) Methodology ..............................................15
Overview of the REA ......................................................................................................15 Developing the quality criteria and the data extraction form...........................................20 The approach to analysis and synthesis ........................................................................21
4. Summary of Evidence Assessed.............................................................................22
Introduction ....................................................................................................................22 Process and quality of the evidence analysed ...............................................................24
5. What Does Resilience Mean in the Context of Flood Risk Management? ...........27
Introduction ....................................................................................................................27 Defining resilience ..........................................................................................................27 The relationship between resilience and vulnerability ....................................................39 What does resilience mean at an individual, community and society level in relation to flood risk management? .................................................................................................42 What does resilience look like in practice in relation to flood risk management? Are there examples of resilient communities?................................................................................54 How is resilience created within communities in relation to flood risk?...........................61
6. What is Known about Interventions to Build Resilience to Flood Risk Management? ................................................................................................................... 63
Introduction ....................................................................................................................63 Risk perception and preparedness.................................................................................64 The role of expertise, collaborative learning and bringing stakeholders together ...........68
7. How is Resilience Measured? What Metrics Exist For Measuring Resilience? ..76
Introduction ....................................................................................................................76 Measuring social vulnerability ........................................................................................76 Quality or quantity? ........................................................................................................79 Capturing community resilience .....................................................................................80
8. Discussion and Conclusions...................................................................................84
Resilience: definition, practice and measurement ..........................................................84 Areas not covered in the review .....................................................................................86 Issues of data, interventions and evaluation ..................................................................87 Relevance to the FRCP..................................................................................................87
9. References ................................................................................................................89
Appendix 1: Data Extraction Form and Quality Criteria ...............................................98
Appendix 2: Summary Table – Section 5.....................................................................100
Appendix 3: Summary Table – Section 6.....................................................................103
Appendix 4: Summary Table – Section 7.....................................................................114
Appendix 5: Example of Completed Data Extraction Form and Quality Assessment ......................................................................................................................................... 117
Executive Summary
Introduction
The increase in the risk of flooding as a result of extreme weather and climate change makes it essential for local authorities and communities to engage with this issue. Defra is providing grant funding to 13 local authorities throughout England under a new Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) scheme aimed at stimulating community action to increase resilience. The measures being developed include property-level protection, flood resilience groups, volunteer flood wardens and community champions, engagement with more vulnerable groups and efforts to increase financial resilience.
Collingwood Environmental Planning (CEP) and a consortium of expert project partners are conducting the evaluation of the Pathfinder scheme. Evaluating policy interventions like the FRCP scheme generates valuable information and contributes to a reliable understanding of which actions work and are effective.
Rapid Evidence Assessments (REA) or systematic reviews are integral to evaluations (HM Treasury, 2011) to provide the conceptual framework. They have been developed in the context of the rapid growth in quantity and availability of evidence specifically via electronic databases, together with the demand in government for transparency and accountability within evidence gathering (JWEG, 2013).
REAs involve a systematic search for relevant literature guided by experts, based on: Clear criteria for inclusion and exclusion of documents and studies Measures of quality of research
This report provides details of the process and findings of the REA conducted for FRCP evaluation.
Aims and purpose of the REA
The overarching purpose of a REA is to review the best available research evidence on a topic to contribute to effective policy making. An REA is shorter and quicker than a systematic review, which is a tool which has a clearly defined set of objectives, a set of criteria to include/exclude evidence, a transparent, replicable methodology and a formal appraisal of evidence using agreed quality criteria. This means that the evidence gathered in an REA is not as comprehensive or exhaustive as a systematic review, and the findings in this report need to be interpreted in this light.
For the evaluation of the Pathfinder scheme, the REA provides evidence to inform the parameter measures of resilience and a comprehensive review of relevant literature with a wider scope than this project.
The REA will inform the evaluation framework and criteria of the Pathfinder scheme-level evaluation and support the pathfinder project leads to improve and develop their own
1
evaluation criteria by clarifying what resilience, and more importantly, what a change in resilience, looks like in practice.
Key points
What does resilience mean in the context of flood risk management as whole?
The term “resilience” has entered into common use within the world of disasters in general over the past two decades and gained increased prominence after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. DFID (2011: 6) provides a useful definition of resilience, from a disaster perspective:
Disaster resilience is the ability of countries, communities and households to manage change, by maintaining or transforming living standards in the face of shocks or stresses – such as earthquakes, droughts or violent conflict – without compromising their long-term prospects.
The REA focuses on the social aspects of resilience largely because this is the focus of the Pathfinders, but also because this is perhaps a less well developed aspect of resilience. There has been a good deal of clear conceptual work to develop frameworks of resilience for disasters in general, and flood risk management in particular, drawing on case studies and qualitative work. The resulting models remain largely descriptive as they have not been tested or refined empirically to the point where they might gain predictive power.
DFID’s (2011: 6) resilience framework frames resilience as a process and asks the key questions: “What is the focus of resilience?” and, “What is the stress or shock?” that “countries, communities and households” are being resilient to. For the Pathfinders, the “shock” is flooding and resilience is focussed at a number of sub-national levels: some are aiming to influence county wide, some are focussed at the level of geographical communities, and some are targeting specific communities of interest.
Twigger-Ross et al. (2011) provide a useful overview of the concept of resilience in relation to emergencies. They use a definition articulated by Whittle et al. (2010) from their work in flood risk and drawing on others (Pelling, 2010, Watson et al., 2009; Medd and Marvin, 2005) and this is presented in Box 1 below.
Box 1
Definitions of resilience (Twigger-Ross et al., 2011)
Resilience as resistance – holding the line, preparing for the last disaster. This is useful when it prepares people for a hazard: e.g. flood gates on houses but not so useful when the hazard is not as anticipated: e.g. overtopping of flood defences that overwhelms flood gates and no plan for evacuation
Resilience as bounce-back – getting back to normal…. pretending it hasn’t happened. Useful in terms of an optimistic rhetoric. Not so useful because it can be unrealistic and can lead to reproduction of vulnerabilities.
Resilience as adaptation – adjusting to a new normal…accepting that your world has
2
changed which should ensure that vulnerabilities are not reproduced. Can be hard for people to accept living with hazards
Resilience as transformation owning the need to change……transforming to meet future threats Radical change (physical, social, psychological, economic) in the face of current or future hazards owned by individuals and communities (of all types).
Here we see a change from a focus on “resistance” to a more proactive approach to “adaptation”, along with a move from a vulnerability focus to a resilience focus which can be seen as a paradigm shift to approaching risk within the disaster field (ENSURE, 2009).
This way of discussing resilience ensures that it is made sense of as a dynamic process, to be considered:
…in terms of relationships and processes rather than as a static characteristic of an individual, household, public service or community. In other words, resilience is not so much a response to the flood hazard itself, but is an emergent characteristic of the way in which the flood response and the subsequent recovery process are managed (Whittle et al., 2010:12).
Capacities / resources for building resilience
Another approach to resilience focuses on “capacities” or “resources” for resilience. This refers to those capacities across a number of domains that exist within a system before an emergency and will be drawn upon during an emergency. They provide the foundation for resilience within the disaster/emergency situation. Response is built using pre-existing community capacities, which are expanded or extended in line with a – perhaps dramatically – identified need (Dynes, 2005). Cutter et al. (2010: 6) develop indicators around the following five aspects with a focus at community level: social, economic, institutional and infrastructure resilience, community capital.
The relationship between vulnerability and resilience
Research shows that there are certain characteristics that make people more likely to suffer negative impacts of flooding. We call those vulnerability characteristics. The focus on vulnerability highlights the issue of inequalities and how they are played out in the context of disasters and emergencies. This leads to a consideration of environmental justice and an understanding of the more systemic societal issues.
A further key issue for resilience is ensuring that pre-existing vulnerabilities are not reproduced through the recovery process. One key issue with the conceptualisation of resilience as “getting back to normal” is the danger that “normal” will mean the continuation of vulnerabilities.
What does resilience mean at an individual, community and society level in relation to flood risk management?
Clear suggestions emerge from the literature as to how community resilience to flooding is created. Firstly, resilience to flooding is inextricably linked to capacities, capabilities, processes that exist on a day to day basis within a community. This “inherent resilience and vulnerabilities” (Cutter et al., 2008) forms the basis for resilience to flooding and other emergencies. However, it is also clear that there are specific capacities that are needed in
3
order to be resilient to flood risk, from knowledge of flood risk, actions to take in a flood, development of emergency plans through to longer term planning of settlements that can mitigate flood risk.
The ENSURE project identifies three key dimensions of resilience: robustness, adaptability and transformability. These dimensions need to be developed in each of the different resilience domains described by Cutter et al. (2010): social, economic, infrastructure, institutional and community capital. Taking a systems approach to flood risk management means that all these aspects will need to be included in resilience building.
Building the capacity for resilience to flooding needs both formal and informal structures and processes and importantly requires clear linkages and accountability between those structures, so that resources can be freely transferred and exchanged. Community resilience cannot be built in a vacuum.
Secondly, floods themselves provide opportunities to create resilience; the emergence of groups, structures and activities is clearly illustrated by the examples of Great Yarmouth, Thirlby and Hull. What is important is translating those temporary relationships into longer lasting resilience. This points to the dynamic nature of resilience and emphasises the need to develop processes of resilience rather than seeing resilience as an outcome that is achieved once and never needs to be re-addressed. Research suggests that creating resilience to flooding is an ongoing process of adaptation and learning from past events and preparing for future risks.
Finally, discussions of resilience lead to a more general question about how we develop sustainable communities:
“It may even be advantageous to widen the scope beyond resilience, and to advocate strengthening communities for a whole range of reasons, or alternatively, to incorporate civil-protection focused resilience building into ongoing community-focused activities (e.g. ‘Transition Towns’ groups). This could bolster people’s desire for local community solutions by highlighting the potential ‘emergency situation’ benefits to locally based groups, who get together for a variety of other reasons (e.g. to make improvements to local area or to improve local networks), because it has the potential to increase community safety through local people knowing each other’s vulnerabilities, resources and skills” (Twigger-Ross et al., 2011: 35).
What is known about interventions to build resilience to flood risk management?
The REA reports on research that has been carried out to explore new ways of approaching flood risk management, which we have termed as interventions. Whilst these are not interventions in the traditional scientific meaning, they are interventions in the sense that they are attempting to create new ways of practising flood risk management, involving key stakeholders and creating new knowledge. We also report on research that highlights barriers to resilience.
Risk perception and preparedness
A number of studies highlight the implications for designing interventions to increase risk awareness, preparedness and action. For example, Bradford et al. (2012: 29) conceptualise risk perception as a “pillar of social resilience” meaning that understanding
4
how people perceive risk is important for the development of risk communications that are trusted and acted upon by individuals so as to improve their resilience to floods. Their quantitative research found no statistical relationship between awareness and flood preparedness or between worry and preparedness. Another study by Soane et al. (2010: 3035) concluded that risk perception only leads to property level protection if homeowners have a sense of responsibility and agency and believe that their efforts will be “worthwhile.”
A problem highlighted by other studies is a lack of clarity regarding the roles and responsibilities of agencies engaged in flood risk management. Deeming et al. (2012) suggest that the issue derives from the many decades of flood hazard management that preceded flood risk management (FRM) (Johnson et al., 2005), when it was understood that ‘the powers that be’ could always tame errant hazards, a philosophy that could be argued to have led to society’s sustained encroachment onto the floodplain. This narrative, they suggest, allowed the hazard-exposed publics to develop a ‘trust in authority’ which is still effectively preventing them from engaging fully with the new flood risk management paradigm.
Further evidence is provided by Harries (2013) of the low take-up of measures to increase resilience by those who were aware of being at risk of flooding or had actually experienced flooding (Thurston et al., 2008) and by Lo (2013) who found no statistical relationship between uptake of insurance and risk perception, experience of flood damage or perceptions of affordability in a study in Australia. The only factor found to be of statistical significance was social expectation.
The role of expertise, collaborative learning and bringing stakeholders together
Given the variety and complexity of issues around risk perception and risk preparedness it is useful to look at approaches aimed at increasing community resilience that go beyond conventional (one way) methods of risk communication and are based on engaging communities through dialogue and discussion.
Several recent studies (Ashley et al., 2012; Evers et al., 2012; McEwan and Jones, 2012; Cashman, 2009 and 2011; Lane et al., 2011; Callon, 1999) report on new attempts at developing strategies and methodologies for opening up flood risk management, challenging the traditional positioning of flood risk ‘expertise’ as solely the domain of science and scientists. These studies report attempts to harness this potential by enabling the co-production of knowledge between by scientists, key institutional stakeholders and the public. One of the reasons this is significant in terms of developing individual and community resilience is that local knowledge can contribute to more accurate and effective mapping of, and in some instances more economical solutions to, flood risk at the local level.
One specific issue looked at in relation to creating resilience is insurance. Insurance can be an aspect of resilience, a barrier to resilience or a factor promoting resilience. For example, Deeming et al.’s (2012) paper on recovery following the 2007 Hull floods highlighted how access to the resilience provided by insurance is sometimes restricted. In the present market, insurers tend to respond to a flood either by increasing a customer’s premiums or excess level which could render insurance unaffordable and encourage some householders to opt out of flood insurance altogether. It is also possible that those with effective and affordable insurance against flood losses will be less inclined to take practical adaptation measures because they know they can rely on the cover provided by their insurers.
5
Deeming et al.’s research also illustrates how insurance can deter the adoption of other resilience measures, for example because of the insistence by insurance companies on like-for-like restoration which prevents the use of more flood resilient techniques. Although this experience is not untypical, it is also possible for insurance and insurers to promote resilience, as reported by Harries (2010).
How is resilience measured? What metrics exist for measuring resilience?
The review process identified a range of academic literature that specifically addressed the issue of measurement of community resilience and social vulnerability to natural hazards such as flooding. The object and subject of measurement vary considerably. However, in all studies there is recognition of the complexity of the social and economic factors, the problems associated with defining both resilience and community, the difficulty of evaluating the changing dimensions of community resilience over time and the huge challenge of developing useable indicators to map these dimensions in a coherent manner. Nonetheless, the measurement, or indication, of community resilience is desirable in helping to develop effective interventions, practices and policies for flood risk management and to build resilient communities.
Measuring social vulnerability and resilience
Cutter et al. (2010) developed and used a Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI), based on a well-known method of identifying social impacts. It is an algorithm that has been developed using a statistical method and can be combined with traditional cost-benefit analysis to produce a context-based result. The term social vulnerability is used broadly to include both social and economic factors. This study argues that an understanding of the differential impacts of hazards such as flooding, as a product of social vulnerability, is a crucial element in formulating more effective FRM.
Other methods of modelling social vulnerability (see Zahran, 2008) have used deductive quantitative modelling techniques to link geographical localities that are characterised by a high percentage of vulnerable communities with higher than expected casualties due to flood events. However, it is important to note that different methods can often produce different results.
The ENSURE (2011) project presents a ‘vulnerability and resilience framework tool’ that indicates the relationship between vulnerability and resilience but also brings together the time and space dimensions of a flood hazard cycle.
Djordjevic et al. (2011) argue that there are compelling reasons for quantifying the costeffectiveness of resilience measures and FRM plans since this is the most direct way to inform more universal and scientifically sound policies and plans. However, the dilemma faced in identifying a common set of preferably quantifiable indicators against the more complex socio-economic variables inherent in the evaluation of resilience in communities, has resulted in the majority of studies using a range of both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Capturing community resilience
It is generally agreed that the concept of community resilience is difficult to assess and ‘operationalize’, not least because it is such an ambiguous concept that different
6
Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation
Rapid Evidence Assessment
February 2014
A report of research carried out by Collingwood Environmental Partnership, on behalf of the Department for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs Authors: Twigger-Ross, C., Kashefi, E., Weldon, S., Brooks, K., Deeming, H., Forrest, S., Fielding, J., Gomersall, A., Harries, T., McCarthy, S., Orr, P., Parker, D., and Tapsell, S (2014) Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder Evaluation: Rapid Evidence Assessment. London: Defra
© Crown copyright 2014 Copyright in the typographical arrangement and design rests with the Crown. This publication (excluding the logo) may be reproduced free of charge in any format or medium provided that it is reproduced accurately and not used in a misleading context. The material must be acknowledged as Crown copyright with the title and source of the publication specified. The views expressed in this document are not necessarily those of Defra. Its officers, servants or agents accept no liability whatsoever for any loss or damage arising from the interpretation or use of the information, or reliance on views contained herein.
Contents
Executive Summary...........................................................................................................1
Introduction ......................................................................................................................1 Aims and purpose of the REA ..........................................................................................1 Key points ........................................................................................................................2 Conclusions ...................................................................................................................... 7
1. Introduction.................................................................................................................9
2. Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) Aims and Research Questions ...................11
Aims of the REA .............................................................................................................11 Research questions........................................................................................................12 Choosing a focus for the REA ........................................................................................14
3. Rapid Evidence Assessment (REA) Methodology ..............................................15
Overview of the REA ......................................................................................................15 Developing the quality criteria and the data extraction form...........................................20 The approach to analysis and synthesis ........................................................................21
4. Summary of Evidence Assessed.............................................................................22
Introduction ....................................................................................................................22 Process and quality of the evidence analysed ...............................................................24
5. What Does Resilience Mean in the Context of Flood Risk Management? ...........27
Introduction ....................................................................................................................27 Defining resilience ..........................................................................................................27 The relationship between resilience and vulnerability ....................................................39 What does resilience mean at an individual, community and society level in relation to flood risk management? .................................................................................................42 What does resilience look like in practice in relation to flood risk management? Are there examples of resilient communities?................................................................................54 How is resilience created within communities in relation to flood risk?...........................61
6. What is Known about Interventions to Build Resilience to Flood Risk Management? ................................................................................................................... 63
Introduction ....................................................................................................................63 Risk perception and preparedness.................................................................................64 The role of expertise, collaborative learning and bringing stakeholders together ...........68
7. How is Resilience Measured? What Metrics Exist For Measuring Resilience? ..76
Introduction ....................................................................................................................76 Measuring social vulnerability ........................................................................................76 Quality or quantity? ........................................................................................................79 Capturing community resilience .....................................................................................80
8. Discussion and Conclusions...................................................................................84
Resilience: definition, practice and measurement ..........................................................84 Areas not covered in the review .....................................................................................86 Issues of data, interventions and evaluation ..................................................................87 Relevance to the FRCP..................................................................................................87
9. References ................................................................................................................89
Appendix 1: Data Extraction Form and Quality Criteria ...............................................98
Appendix 2: Summary Table – Section 5.....................................................................100
Appendix 3: Summary Table – Section 6.....................................................................103
Appendix 4: Summary Table – Section 7.....................................................................114
Appendix 5: Example of Completed Data Extraction Form and Quality Assessment ......................................................................................................................................... 117
Executive Summary
Introduction
The increase in the risk of flooding as a result of extreme weather and climate change makes it essential for local authorities and communities to engage with this issue. Defra is providing grant funding to 13 local authorities throughout England under a new Flood Resilience Community Pathfinder (FRCP) scheme aimed at stimulating community action to increase resilience. The measures being developed include property-level protection, flood resilience groups, volunteer flood wardens and community champions, engagement with more vulnerable groups and efforts to increase financial resilience.
Collingwood Environmental Planning (CEP) and a consortium of expert project partners are conducting the evaluation of the Pathfinder scheme. Evaluating policy interventions like the FRCP scheme generates valuable information and contributes to a reliable understanding of which actions work and are effective.
Rapid Evidence Assessments (REA) or systematic reviews are integral to evaluations (HM Treasury, 2011) to provide the conceptual framework. They have been developed in the context of the rapid growth in quantity and availability of evidence specifically via electronic databases, together with the demand in government for transparency and accountability within evidence gathering (JWEG, 2013).
REAs involve a systematic search for relevant literature guided by experts, based on: Clear criteria for inclusion and exclusion of documents and studies Measures of quality of research
This report provides details of the process and findings of the REA conducted for FRCP evaluation.
Aims and purpose of the REA
The overarching purpose of a REA is to review the best available research evidence on a topic to contribute to effective policy making. An REA is shorter and quicker than a systematic review, which is a tool which has a clearly defined set of objectives, a set of criteria to include/exclude evidence, a transparent, replicable methodology and a formal appraisal of evidence using agreed quality criteria. This means that the evidence gathered in an REA is not as comprehensive or exhaustive as a systematic review, and the findings in this report need to be interpreted in this light.
For the evaluation of the Pathfinder scheme, the REA provides evidence to inform the parameter measures of resilience and a comprehensive review of relevant literature with a wider scope than this project.
The REA will inform the evaluation framework and criteria of the Pathfinder scheme-level evaluation and support the pathfinder project leads to improve and develop their own
1
evaluation criteria by clarifying what resilience, and more importantly, what a change in resilience, looks like in practice.
Key points
What does resilience mean in the context of flood risk management as whole?
The term “resilience” has entered into common use within the world of disasters in general over the past two decades and gained increased prominence after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. DFID (2011: 6) provides a useful definition of resilience, from a disaster perspective:
Disaster resilience is the ability of countries, communities and households to manage change, by maintaining or transforming living standards in the face of shocks or stresses – such as earthquakes, droughts or violent conflict – without compromising their long-term prospects.
The REA focuses on the social aspects of resilience largely because this is the focus of the Pathfinders, but also because this is perhaps a less well developed aspect of resilience. There has been a good deal of clear conceptual work to develop frameworks of resilience for disasters in general, and flood risk management in particular, drawing on case studies and qualitative work. The resulting models remain largely descriptive as they have not been tested or refined empirically to the point where they might gain predictive power.
DFID’s (2011: 6) resilience framework frames resilience as a process and asks the key questions: “What is the focus of resilience?” and, “What is the stress or shock?” that “countries, communities and households” are being resilient to. For the Pathfinders, the “shock” is flooding and resilience is focussed at a number of sub-national levels: some are aiming to influence county wide, some are focussed at the level of geographical communities, and some are targeting specific communities of interest.
Twigger-Ross et al. (2011) provide a useful overview of the concept of resilience in relation to emergencies. They use a definition articulated by Whittle et al. (2010) from their work in flood risk and drawing on others (Pelling, 2010, Watson et al., 2009; Medd and Marvin, 2005) and this is presented in Box 1 below.
Box 1
Definitions of resilience (Twigger-Ross et al., 2011)
Resilience as resistance – holding the line, preparing for the last disaster. This is useful when it prepares people for a hazard: e.g. flood gates on houses but not so useful when the hazard is not as anticipated: e.g. overtopping of flood defences that overwhelms flood gates and no plan for evacuation
Resilience as bounce-back – getting back to normal…. pretending it hasn’t happened. Useful in terms of an optimistic rhetoric. Not so useful because it can be unrealistic and can lead to reproduction of vulnerabilities.
Resilience as adaptation – adjusting to a new normal…accepting that your world has
2
changed which should ensure that vulnerabilities are not reproduced. Can be hard for people to accept living with hazards
Resilience as transformation owning the need to change……transforming to meet future threats Radical change (physical, social, psychological, economic) in the face of current or future hazards owned by individuals and communities (of all types).
Here we see a change from a focus on “resistance” to a more proactive approach to “adaptation”, along with a move from a vulnerability focus to a resilience focus which can be seen as a paradigm shift to approaching risk within the disaster field (ENSURE, 2009).
This way of discussing resilience ensures that it is made sense of as a dynamic process, to be considered:
…in terms of relationships and processes rather than as a static characteristic of an individual, household, public service or community. In other words, resilience is not so much a response to the flood hazard itself, but is an emergent characteristic of the way in which the flood response and the subsequent recovery process are managed (Whittle et al., 2010:12).
Capacities / resources for building resilience
Another approach to resilience focuses on “capacities” or “resources” for resilience. This refers to those capacities across a number of domains that exist within a system before an emergency and will be drawn upon during an emergency. They provide the foundation for resilience within the disaster/emergency situation. Response is built using pre-existing community capacities, which are expanded or extended in line with a – perhaps dramatically – identified need (Dynes, 2005). Cutter et al. (2010: 6) develop indicators around the following five aspects with a focus at community level: social, economic, institutional and infrastructure resilience, community capital.
The relationship between vulnerability and resilience
Research shows that there are certain characteristics that make people more likely to suffer negative impacts of flooding. We call those vulnerability characteristics. The focus on vulnerability highlights the issue of inequalities and how they are played out in the context of disasters and emergencies. This leads to a consideration of environmental justice and an understanding of the more systemic societal issues.
A further key issue for resilience is ensuring that pre-existing vulnerabilities are not reproduced through the recovery process. One key issue with the conceptualisation of resilience as “getting back to normal” is the danger that “normal” will mean the continuation of vulnerabilities.
What does resilience mean at an individual, community and society level in relation to flood risk management?
Clear suggestions emerge from the literature as to how community resilience to flooding is created. Firstly, resilience to flooding is inextricably linked to capacities, capabilities, processes that exist on a day to day basis within a community. This “inherent resilience and vulnerabilities” (Cutter et al., 2008) forms the basis for resilience to flooding and other emergencies. However, it is also clear that there are specific capacities that are needed in
3
order to be resilient to flood risk, from knowledge of flood risk, actions to take in a flood, development of emergency plans through to longer term planning of settlements that can mitigate flood risk.
The ENSURE project identifies three key dimensions of resilience: robustness, adaptability and transformability. These dimensions need to be developed in each of the different resilience domains described by Cutter et al. (2010): social, economic, infrastructure, institutional and community capital. Taking a systems approach to flood risk management means that all these aspects will need to be included in resilience building.
Building the capacity for resilience to flooding needs both formal and informal structures and processes and importantly requires clear linkages and accountability between those structures, so that resources can be freely transferred and exchanged. Community resilience cannot be built in a vacuum.
Secondly, floods themselves provide opportunities to create resilience; the emergence of groups, structures and activities is clearly illustrated by the examples of Great Yarmouth, Thirlby and Hull. What is important is translating those temporary relationships into longer lasting resilience. This points to the dynamic nature of resilience and emphasises the need to develop processes of resilience rather than seeing resilience as an outcome that is achieved once and never needs to be re-addressed. Research suggests that creating resilience to flooding is an ongoing process of adaptation and learning from past events and preparing for future risks.
Finally, discussions of resilience lead to a more general question about how we develop sustainable communities:
“It may even be advantageous to widen the scope beyond resilience, and to advocate strengthening communities for a whole range of reasons, or alternatively, to incorporate civil-protection focused resilience building into ongoing community-focused activities (e.g. ‘Transition Towns’ groups). This could bolster people’s desire for local community solutions by highlighting the potential ‘emergency situation’ benefits to locally based groups, who get together for a variety of other reasons (e.g. to make improvements to local area or to improve local networks), because it has the potential to increase community safety through local people knowing each other’s vulnerabilities, resources and skills” (Twigger-Ross et al., 2011: 35).
What is known about interventions to build resilience to flood risk management?
The REA reports on research that has been carried out to explore new ways of approaching flood risk management, which we have termed as interventions. Whilst these are not interventions in the traditional scientific meaning, they are interventions in the sense that they are attempting to create new ways of practising flood risk management, involving key stakeholders and creating new knowledge. We also report on research that highlights barriers to resilience.
Risk perception and preparedness
A number of studies highlight the implications for designing interventions to increase risk awareness, preparedness and action. For example, Bradford et al. (2012: 29) conceptualise risk perception as a “pillar of social resilience” meaning that understanding
4
how people perceive risk is important for the development of risk communications that are trusted and acted upon by individuals so as to improve their resilience to floods. Their quantitative research found no statistical relationship between awareness and flood preparedness or between worry and preparedness. Another study by Soane et al. (2010: 3035) concluded that risk perception only leads to property level protection if homeowners have a sense of responsibility and agency and believe that their efforts will be “worthwhile.”
A problem highlighted by other studies is a lack of clarity regarding the roles and responsibilities of agencies engaged in flood risk management. Deeming et al. (2012) suggest that the issue derives from the many decades of flood hazard management that preceded flood risk management (FRM) (Johnson et al., 2005), when it was understood that ‘the powers that be’ could always tame errant hazards, a philosophy that could be argued to have led to society’s sustained encroachment onto the floodplain. This narrative, they suggest, allowed the hazard-exposed publics to develop a ‘trust in authority’ which is still effectively preventing them from engaging fully with the new flood risk management paradigm.
Further evidence is provided by Harries (2013) of the low take-up of measures to increase resilience by those who were aware of being at risk of flooding or had actually experienced flooding (Thurston et al., 2008) and by Lo (2013) who found no statistical relationship between uptake of insurance and risk perception, experience of flood damage or perceptions of affordability in a study in Australia. The only factor found to be of statistical significance was social expectation.
The role of expertise, collaborative learning and bringing stakeholders together
Given the variety and complexity of issues around risk perception and risk preparedness it is useful to look at approaches aimed at increasing community resilience that go beyond conventional (one way) methods of risk communication and are based on engaging communities through dialogue and discussion.
Several recent studies (Ashley et al., 2012; Evers et al., 2012; McEwan and Jones, 2012; Cashman, 2009 and 2011; Lane et al., 2011; Callon, 1999) report on new attempts at developing strategies and methodologies for opening up flood risk management, challenging the traditional positioning of flood risk ‘expertise’ as solely the domain of science and scientists. These studies report attempts to harness this potential by enabling the co-production of knowledge between by scientists, key institutional stakeholders and the public. One of the reasons this is significant in terms of developing individual and community resilience is that local knowledge can contribute to more accurate and effective mapping of, and in some instances more economical solutions to, flood risk at the local level.
One specific issue looked at in relation to creating resilience is insurance. Insurance can be an aspect of resilience, a barrier to resilience or a factor promoting resilience. For example, Deeming et al.’s (2012) paper on recovery following the 2007 Hull floods highlighted how access to the resilience provided by insurance is sometimes restricted. In the present market, insurers tend to respond to a flood either by increasing a customer’s premiums or excess level which could render insurance unaffordable and encourage some householders to opt out of flood insurance altogether. It is also possible that those with effective and affordable insurance against flood losses will be less inclined to take practical adaptation measures because they know they can rely on the cover provided by their insurers.
5
Deeming et al.’s research also illustrates how insurance can deter the adoption of other resilience measures, for example because of the insistence by insurance companies on like-for-like restoration which prevents the use of more flood resilient techniques. Although this experience is not untypical, it is also possible for insurance and insurers to promote resilience, as reported by Harries (2010).
How is resilience measured? What metrics exist for measuring resilience?
The review process identified a range of academic literature that specifically addressed the issue of measurement of community resilience and social vulnerability to natural hazards such as flooding. The object and subject of measurement vary considerably. However, in all studies there is recognition of the complexity of the social and economic factors, the problems associated with defining both resilience and community, the difficulty of evaluating the changing dimensions of community resilience over time and the huge challenge of developing useable indicators to map these dimensions in a coherent manner. Nonetheless, the measurement, or indication, of community resilience is desirable in helping to develop effective interventions, practices and policies for flood risk management and to build resilient communities.
Measuring social vulnerability and resilience
Cutter et al. (2010) developed and used a Social Vulnerability Index (SoVI), based on a well-known method of identifying social impacts. It is an algorithm that has been developed using a statistical method and can be combined with traditional cost-benefit analysis to produce a context-based result. The term social vulnerability is used broadly to include both social and economic factors. This study argues that an understanding of the differential impacts of hazards such as flooding, as a product of social vulnerability, is a crucial element in formulating more effective FRM.
Other methods of modelling social vulnerability (see Zahran, 2008) have used deductive quantitative modelling techniques to link geographical localities that are characterised by a high percentage of vulnerable communities with higher than expected casualties due to flood events. However, it is important to note that different methods can often produce different results.
The ENSURE (2011) project presents a ‘vulnerability and resilience framework tool’ that indicates the relationship between vulnerability and resilience but also brings together the time and space dimensions of a flood hazard cycle.
Djordjevic et al. (2011) argue that there are compelling reasons for quantifying the costeffectiveness of resilience measures and FRM plans since this is the most direct way to inform more universal and scientifically sound policies and plans. However, the dilemma faced in identifying a common set of preferably quantifiable indicators against the more complex socio-economic variables inherent in the evaluation of resilience in communities, has resulted in the majority of studies using a range of both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Capturing community resilience
It is generally agreed that the concept of community resilience is difficult to assess and ‘operationalize’, not least because it is such an ambiguous concept that different
6