Maureen Fordham

Reframing disaster policy: the global evolution of vulnerable communities

The Social Construction of Disaster Disaster is widely perceived as an event beyond human control. The capricious hand of fate has moved against unsuspecting human communities, creating massive destruction and despair.[i] The sudden randomness of the event accentuates the cruelty of its effects, as surely the victims would have acted differently, had they known the risk. Other nations and organizations rush humanitarian aid to rebuild damaged communities, but stop short of examining the policies and practices that contributed to the event.

Making Women Visible in Disasters: Problematising the Private Domain

Gender awareness and sensitivity in disaster research and management remains uncommon and tends to focus on the developing rather than the developed world. This paper uses a feminist oral geography to present some findings about womens experiences in two floods in Scotland. It is conceptualised around public and private (masculinised and feminised) space, problematising the private domain and presenting it, in the feminist research tradition, as a legitimate object of research. It shows the ordinary and everyday to be more opaque and complex than usually imagined and makes recommendations for their recognition and incorporation into disaster management. While there is a specific focus on the private domain of the home, this is not intended to reinforce gender stereotypes but simply to recognise the reality of many of the women interviewed. It concludes that disaster research generally has yet to advance much beyond the earliest stages of feminist studies which merely sought to make women visible in society.

Flood Hazard Assessment and Management: Interface with the Public

The understanding of how people evaluate and respond to natural hazards in an urban area, and how this knowledge can be integrated in the planning and management process, are becoming very important elements of a comprehensive and participatory approach to flood hazard management. Such an approach demands a clear comprehension of the processes of the risks perception, causal attribution, possible solutions for the problem and patterns of behaviour developed during hazard situations. The willingness of the public to participate in flood management, and the attitudes to previous initiatives also need to be addressed. The provision of structural flood defences can have a major impact on the environment and there has been an expression of concern by many members of the public for the degradation of river corridors. In this context, it is becoming a commonly accepted practice by central or local governments to submit flood management plans to public discussion. Appropriate techniques for interfacing with the public are necessary to support this upsurge of public involvement. This paper presents results from research on public perception of floods, flood management and participatory initiatives in Setúbal, Portugal. An extensive interview programme was undertaken with residents and shopkeepers – with and without flood experience, professionals responsible for dealing with flood control problems and local authorities responsible for decision-making on flood management. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations for flood hazard management policy making and processes.

Social capital and post-disaster mental health.

Background : Despite national and international policies to develop social capital in disaster-affected communities, empiric evidence on the association between social capital and disaster mental health is limited and ambiguous. Objective : The study explores the relationship between social capital and disaster mental health outcomes (PTSD, anxiety, and depression) in combination with individual factors (appraisal, coping behavior, and social support). Design : This is a community-based cross-sectional study in a flood-affected town in northern England. The study is part of the MICRODIS multi-country research project that examines the impact of natural disasters. It included 232 flood-affected respondents. Results : The findings showed that a considerable part of the association between cognitive and structural social capital and mental health is exerted through individual appraisal processes (i.e. property loss, primary and secondary appraisal), social support, and coping behavior. These individual factors were contingent on social capital. After the inclusion of individual characteristics, cognitive social capital was negatively related to lower mental health problems and structural social capital was positively associated to experiencing anxiety but not to PTSD or depression. Depression and anxiety showed a different pattern of association with both components of social capital. Conclusions : Individual oriented stress reducing interventions that use appraisal processes, social support, and coping as starting points could be more effective by taking into account the subjective experience of the social context in terms of trust and feelings of mutual support and reciprocity in a community. Findings indicate that affected people may especially benefit from a combination of individual stress reducing interventions and psychosocial interventions that foster cognitive social capital.

Public perceptions of river corridors and attitudes towards river works

Abstract The Environment Agency has accepted the need for public participation in decisions concerning river management in keeping with Agenda 21 concerns for environmental policies that command a good measure of public support. In the past, public participation has often relied upon consultations involving formal meetings with interest groups and local politicians. Methods of public consultation are changing. In tapping public opinion the Environment Agency now relies less on public meetings and increasingly more on a direct approach and involvement of the public. Research at Middlesex University is part of the attempt to provide opportunities for the representation of views of the lay public to be considered within the management of rivers and river corridors. The research has used surveys of representative samples of members of the public, often at riverside sites. This paper reports on some of the research projects that have developed on these themes, and analyses the implications of their results for...

Gender and Disasters

The gendered dimensions of disasters remain underreported and poorly managed. A growing body of evidence demonstrates that women and men (girls and boys) experience disasters and their aftermath in different ways. The differences arise, on the one hand, from womens frequent subordinate status, and on the other, from the socialization of boys and men to take risks and assume dominance, in societies around the world. This can lead to increased female workloads at one end of the scale, to gender-based violence (GBV) and excess female deaths at the extreme end. For men and boys it can create situations where their emotional needs are not met and they adopt negative coping behaviors. Key areas of environmental health including shelter/housing and livelihoods; water, sanitation, and waste management; general environmental health; and food safety and nutrition can be seen to have gender aspects in disaster contexts and require attention on both service delivery efficiency and equity grounds.

Disaster and Development Research and Practice: A Necessary Eclecticism?

Those concerned with disaster and development represent a diversity of interests including the academic/theoretical, the policy-related, the practitioner-oriented, and the political. This results in the generation of different theories and literatures, varied budgets, disparate organizational structures, and diverse constituencies and worldviews. Perhaps, not surprisingly, there can be conflicting expectations, and even degrees of hostility and incomprehension, among those who deal in some way with disaster and/or development.

Operationalizing risk perception and preparedness behavior research for a multi-hazard context

ABSTRACT Increasingly, citizens are being asked to take a more active role in disaster risk reduction (DRR), as decentralization of hazard governance has shifted greater responsibility for hazard preparedness actions onto individuals. Simultaneously, the taxonomy of hazards considered for DRR has expanded to include medical and social crises alongside natural hazards. Risk perception research emerged to support decision-makers with understanding how people characterize and evaluate different hazards to anticipate behavioral response and guide risk communication. Since its inception, the risk perception concept has been incorporated into many behavioral theories, which have been applied to examine preparedness for numerous hazard types. Behavioral theories have had moderate success in predicting or explaining preparedness behaviors; however, they are typically applied to a single hazard type and there is a gap in understanding which theories (if any) are suited for examining multiple hazard types simultaneously. This paper first reviews meta-analyses of behavioral theories to better understand performance. Universal lessons learnt are summarized for survey design. Second, theoretically based preparedness studies for floods, earthquakes, epidemics, and terrorism are reviewed to assess the conceptual requirements for a ‘multi-hazard’ preparedness approach. The development of an online preparedness self-assessment and learning platform is discussed.

Double Disaster: Disaster through a Gender Lens

This chapter explores the impact of disasters on women and girls, with particular reference to the context of the developing world. It critically explores the conceptual and theoretical basis for assuming that a differential impact exists. It highlights that disasters are gendered events and women and girls experience them differently from men, suffering longer term and more intangible impacts such as a rise in violence or greater insecurity in employment. Given women and girls are impacted more and differently than men and boys, it might be expected gender issues would be a key policy concern, yet the chapter highlights that gender is still excluded from much policy on disaster risk reduction. Drawing on the lessons learned from processes to “engender development,” it suggests that, although exclusion remains an issue, how women are included in disaster risk reduction and response can also raise concerns. It concludes by highlighting that tackling gendered risk demands both a reconceptualization of “disaster” and for disasters to become a development issue.

Sexual and gender minorities in disaster

Abstract This article introduces a themed section of Gender, Place and Culture on ‘Sexual and Gender Minorities in Disaster’. This introduction frames the articles constituting the themed section, which together contribute important insights to the growing body of research, policy and practice on the experiences of sexual and gender minorities in disasters. The introduction positions the themed section at the intersection of disaster studies and geography. We briefly discuss how each discipline has attended to sexual and gender minorities to date, and suggest ways in which each discipline can enrich the other through collaborative scholarship on sexual and gender minorities in disaster. Importantly, we draw attention to critical limitations and occlusions concerning sexual and gender minorities in disaster risk reduction (DRR) policy and practice. Redressing these gaps in DRR globally should be a critical focus for future collaborative and applied research on sexual and gender minorities in disaster.