Flood Resilience Building in Thailand: Assessing Progress and the Effect of Leadership

Gary Webb,Chanisada Choosuk,Somporn Khunwishit

doi:10.1007/s13753-018-0162-0

Abstract

Disaster risk reduction has become a global strategy for making cities more resilient since the establishment of the Hyogo Framework for Action in 2005. The question that still challenges emergency management scholars and professionals, however, is what contributes to the progress of resilience building. Previous literature suggests that disaster resilience can be attributable to multiple factors, including leadership. But the specific abilities that help leaders promote resilience have not yet been examined empirically. To address this problem, using the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction 10 Essentials for Making Cities Resilient as guidelines, we assessed the progress of flood resilience building in Thailand and its relationship to local government leaders’ abilities. Our research showed that, since the flood disaster in 2011, municipalities in Thailand have made moderate progress in flood resilience building. The results of a multiple regression analysis revealed that disaster resilience leadership abilities have had a statistically significant, positive effect on the progress of flood resilience building. Our findings underscore the role of leadership in making cities more resilient and shed light on how local government leaders can contribute to the progress of disaster risk reduction. We also outline the academic implications and practical contributions of our research.

Highlights

Earthquakes, floods, storms, and other climate-related crises have become major sources of property damage and fatalities around the world
As the disaster management paradigm has evolved from a traditional approach that focuses on managing an emergency to a more proactive approach that emphasizes the reduction of disaster risk and building resilience, we argue that it is these abilities that help local government leaders get the tasks of disaster risk reduction and resilience building done effectively
The results showed that our hypothesis that disaster resilience leadership (DRL) has a positive effect on a city’s progress of flood resilience building was empirically supported

Summary

Introduction

Earthquakes, floods, storms, and other climate-related crises have become major sources of property damage and fatalities around the world. Examples of catastrophes that have produced devastating impacts within the last 15 years are the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, super cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008, the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake in China, the 2011 East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami, typhoon Haiyan that hit the Philippines in 2013, and the 2015 earthquake in Nepal. These increases in the frequency and impacts of disasters have made city resilience building much more important at the global level

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