Resilient planning pathways to community resilience to tsunami in Chile

Abstract

There is growing urgency to develop resilient coastal communities worldwide due to an increase in destructive events. Many resilience assessment models, tools, and frameworks are being developed to guide planners and policy makers for planning resilient communities. However, many lack a multidimensional approach, while others disregard regional variations in indicators' importance, and neglect an adequate community involvement level. In turn, these factors hinder the development of a ‘Resilient Planning Pathway’ (RPP), or a set of planning strategies that consider key local environmental attributes and socio-cultural capacities. The RPP approach has been used in the context of vulnerable groups and urban and landscape planning worldwide. The objective of this study is to identify key resilience aspects to develop RPPs in Chilean coastal communities exposed to tsunami hazards. We used a cross-sectional participatory method with public servants and coastal communities which identifies regional variations in resilience dimensions, in order to define challenges for planners and policy makers. A systematic international literature review in Atlas.Ti revealed 78 resilience composite indicators and six resilience dimensions for tsunami hazards in Chile. Composite indicators were evaluated according to their importance and experience by 134 public servants within 42 coastal communities, revealing the aspects that guide the current development of RPPs. Public servants' responses are similar among macrozones and suggest that RPP development has focused on the physical, socio-cultural, and institutional dimensions, neglecting the ecological and economic dimensions. In contrast, the community opinions from 10 representative coastal settlements collected in 29 focus groups indicated that the importance of composite indicators varies among macrozones and with regards to the public servants' responses. This finding suggests commonalities and differences among macrozones regarding the challenges in developing Chilean coastal communities' RPPs. We believe that our methodological approach could help generate similar assessments in other world zones.