 cities may be inadequate.
Is local knowledge alone enough?
Much has been written on the role of local knowledge for disaster risk reduction but what if that local knowledge is weak or absent? Community-based or participatory approaches to disaster management are common in the NGO sector, whereby communities identify and prioritise the hazards and risks they face and develop their own response strategies. But, there are concerns that indigenous knowledge alone is not enough, particularly in the context of rare high-magnitude events or without supporting expertise or resources. In the absence of local knowledge due to the long recurrence intervals of large earthquakes, developing strategies to enhance resilience can be a much greater challenge, as information needs to be provided before communities can engage in a discussion about resilience building.
We chose Nepal as an exemplar of an area with a high but spatially variable and poorly quantified level of seismic hazard; a significant divide between urban and rural populations in terms of access to resources and government services; and one in which significant local efforts to boost individual and community resilience to earthquakes were already underway, led by a range of national and regional NGOs including one of our local project partners: the National Society for Earthquake Technology (NSET).
We undertook ten days of field work in two communities in rural central Nepal to develop an understanding of the interface between natural hazard science, the concerns of the community relative to seismic risk, and their perceptions and understandings of earthquake-related hazards. The multi-disciplinary team comprised academics and practitioners from Durham and Northumbria University and our local partner organisations including: the NSET the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and the Nepal School of Social Work. The team included a geologist, civil engineer, social worker, environmental scientist and geographer in consultation with the local community. A range of participatory methodologies were used including: risk ranking exercises, land use and hazard mapping, scenario building using a 3D model of the study area.
In addition, a one-month consultation with local partners in Nepal enabled us to identify the relevant initiatives that are already underway, as well as the key research needs from the perspective of the practitioner community. Second, we met with the same practitioners, representatives of regional NGOs involved in earthquake hazard assessment and disaster preparedness (ICIMOD and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre), and academic experts from the US and UK in an invited workshop at Durham University. Both of these approaches proved to be invaluable in shaping and contextualising the results of the study, and provide a positive model for effective engagement within the larger Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards Programme (IRNH).
In their next post, Nick and Katie will discuss the main findings from the scoping study and the implications for further research in this area and introduce some of the methods used in the study.