Participatory Methods in the Georgian Caucasus: Understanding Vulnerability and Response to Debrisflow Hazards

Valentina Spanu,Michael Keith Mccall,George Gaprindashvili

doi:10.4236/ijg.2015.67054

Abstract

Assessment and emergency planning to cope with disaster risks are usually founded primarily on expert evaluations, in part because local governments and public bodies mainly finance the recovery activities. Local communities affected by disasters are scarcely really involved in the processes of information collection, problem analysis, or design of emergency plans.However, the development of good practices for incorporating local people’s knowledge into disaster risk management, known as Community-Based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM), is becoming more common. Scientific communities increasingly realize the importance of local knowledge, though in Georgia this is still uncommon. Georgia faces frequent natural disasters and threats to its fragile ecosystems caused by unsustainable natural resource management and agricultural practices, improper infrastructure and urban development, as well as by innate geological and climatic factors. In this context, the lack of communication between local communities and public administrations is absolutely deleterious. The article analyzes the effectiveness of participatory methods and tools for better comprehension of people’s vulnerability and responses. Fieldwork in mountain areas of Caucasus involved local communities to investigate the direct participation of local people in Disaster Risk Management and assess their availability and interest to engage in hazard mapping and risk responses.

Highlights

In October 2010, a workshop has been carried out in Bulachauri, Georgia, in order to teach those who work with local authorities and governments how to approach the communities affected by disasters related to slope instability, how to get useful information and how to work together with them for disaster prevention and management
Some fieldworks have been done to check the level of trust of the local communities toward the above mentioned institutions, the reliability in giving useful information and the availability in collaborating with NGOs and local governments in order to reduce the risk of disasters in the future and reconstruct the destroyed areas
The program CyberTracker has been used as main tool for communication, as a bridge to help connect local governments and experts as stakeholders interested in receiving information to face the problem, and the people directly affected by the problem as injured party interested in providing the correct information in order to receive the proper help

Summary

Introduction

In October 2010, a workshop has been carried out in Bulachauri, Georgia, in order to teach those who work with local authorities and governments how to approach the communities affected by disasters related to slope instability, how to get useful information and how to work together with them for disaster prevention and management. Activities were focused on institutional capacity building in disaster risk reduction via introduction of modern spatial approaches and technologies and the development of risk communication strategy in spatial planning. CyberTracker is a method of field data collection and it allows the record of large quantities of geo-referenced data for field observations at a high speed and level of detail. This program enhances the communication with the people even if the mother tongue is different thanks to special officially recognized icons, maps and graphs allowing the investigator to ask for information, and the local interlocutor to answer in a quite detailed way

Methods

Results

Conclusion