Community resilience assessment and literature analysis

Abstract

Earlier and current disaster-related research emphasised the sociological/behavioural perspective. This led to a significant amount of literature devoted to descriptive context of natural, man-made and technological disasters and sequelae. This paper considers a next step involving a more expanded approach in research methodology. The phases include: (1) the development of a comprehensive database of ideas provided by authors of scholarly and scientific papers; (2) the development of computer-supported algorithms to prepare an array of scenarios representing relationships, gaps and inconsistencies in existing knowledge; (3) a process for evaluating the scenarios to determine a feasible and interesting next research strategy or programmatic action that will provide enhanced description of the problems as well as possible insights to their correction by interventions. The intent is to develop interventions as an essential component for better prevention, mitigation, rehabilitation, reconstruction and problem-solving affected by disaster events. To illustrate this approach, community resilience, a relatively new and important idea was studied. The phrase was used to describe relationships and omissions. The ideas associated with this central idea were considered in the building of a new instrument for evaluation of community vulnerability and readiness. This methodology addresses the time constraints realised by practitioners and investigators. The methods should eliminate tedious, clerical functions and focus on the intellectual functions representing optimal use of human energy.