Tag: Disaster management

Posted on in COVID-19, Disaster management, Geography, HCRI, Humanitarianism, LGBTI, LGBTIQ, Queer, Research, resilience, Uncategorized, University of Manchester

Policy@Manchester: LGBTIQ+ experiences of COVID-19 in the UK and the need for more inclusive crisis policies

This post was originally written for Policy@Manchester and posted on March 10, 2021, at http://blog.policy.manchester.ac.uk/posts/2021/03/lgbtiq-experiences-of-covid-19-in-the-uk-and-the-need-for-more-inclusive-crisis-policies/

Reading not for you? Listen to this article instead.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had wide-ranging effects for people across the UK. However, some groups have felt the effects of the pandemic and its associated lockdowns more than others. In this blog, Dr Billy Haworth, from the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, shares their recent research into the experiences of LGBTIQ+ populations during COVID-19. They argue that LGBTIQ+ populations have faced unique challenges, and will require additional support to help them overcome the effects of the crisis. There is great diversity and even inequality within LGBTIQ+ populations, and in the longer-term, policymakers need to ensure that their policies are fit for all prior to implementation.

  • LGBTIQ+ populations have reported a vast range of challenges to their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The sudden removal of support networks and identity-affirming spaces has disproportionately affected these individuals.
  • LGBTIQ+ community groups and volunteer organisations have filled gaps, and policymakers need to support and expand the important work of these groups.
  • In the long-term, policymakers need to move away from ‘one-size-fits-all’ approaches when they design policies for managing crises.

The coronavirus pandemic and associated response measures have had disproportionate impacts on different segments of society. This includes people with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity/expression, and sexual characteristics (SOGIESC), or who are more commonly known as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) populations. Mental health challenges, social isolation, substance misuse, loss of livelihood and financial difficulties, scapegoating, discrimination and stigma, elevated risk of violence, reduced access to health and support services, and more have been reported as experienced among LGBTIQ+ populations.

LGBTIQ+ experiences

We know that socio-economically marginalised groups, including LGBTIQ+ people, are often the hardest hit during crises, as marginality leads to increased vulnerability. Crisis responses generally do not adequately account for LGBTIQ+ needs, if at all. Moreover, response strategies themselves can heighten and reproduce vulnerabilities by assuming binary cisgender (people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth) and heterosexual identities as the norm, thereby failing to address the needs of minority populations. A United Nations report described how COVID-19 responses reproduced and intensified pre-existing exclusion and discrimination patterns for LGBTIQ+ people. For example, same-sex couples in the Philippines were denied COVID-19 support because of local government views on what counts as a “family” for food aid distributions.

Complementing other reports, I conducted in-depth interviews with a diverse range of LGBTIQ+ people in the UK between May and October 2020 to capture and understand their experiences of COVID-19. This timeframe represents various stages of the UK’s pandemic response, including lockdowns and periods of easing and tightening of restrictions.

My research exposed key challenges for LGBTIQ+ people during the pandemic. Significant mental health impacts were felt, especially during lockdown. This included increased anxieties about the virus and issues related to gender or sexual identity. Isolation from supportive people and identity-affirming spaces elevated stress. Some participants described being at home with unsupportive families, or having limited biological family relationships, reducing the support networks that so many people relied on in the pandemic.

Supportive spaces

Some industries, like the hospitality and entertainment sectors, have experienced greater impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and associated social and economic restrictions. LGBTIQ+ people working in these areas expressed concerns over income in the short term and anxieties about longer-term employment prospects. More widely, disruptions to LGBTIQ+ spaces have been acutely felt, including nightlife, but also community spaces, support groups and activities like Pride festivals. These spaces usually provide many LGBTIQ+ people with essential opportunities to freely and safely express themselves and their identities.

The National LGBT Survey found that LGBTIQ+ people were more likely to suffer mental health challenges without adequate support, and that LGBTIQ+-friendly spaces, including nightlife and Pride events, are highly important but in decline. Based on this information, policymakers could have predicted the intensification of these issues during COVID-19, yet gaps persisted in policies and responses.

Existing and new community groups filled critical gaps in providing mental health support and reducing isolation through mutual aid and the creation of safe and identity-affirming (online) spaces. In fact, moving activities online presented opportunities to connect with new and diverse audiences, in some ways improving accessibility. Community organisations and peer-support groups were vital for many LGBTIQ+ people during COVID-19.

Diversity within LGBTIQ+ populations

My research makes clear that there is no single LGBTIQ+ experience. Diversity of COVID-19 experiences reflects diversity within LGBTIQ+ populations, including diversity between different subcategories, but also intersections with other factors, like age, class, disability or race.

My research highlighted unique challenges for transgender people. While cisgender people experienced disruptions to healthcare access, this issue was particularly significant for transgender patients. Healthcare relating to gender affirmation and gender identities was delayed if not halted completely, often without communication. This caused confusion and anxiety, exacerbated mental health concerns, and added to already long waiting periods for gender identity clinics. These delays, coupled with people being at home with their bodies more and reduced access to support, also contributed to gender dysphoria.

If we overlook diversity and only account for the most visible experiences, such as those of cisgender gay men, we risk furthering inequalities within minority groups.

How can policies be improved?

In the short term, policies should prioritise access to disrupted services that were directly related to the aspects of LGBTIQ+ vulnerability most exacerbated during COVID-19 lockdowns. This should include facilitating increased and targeted mental health support through training and resources, and maintaining access to healthcare during crises, especially transgender care.

Resources should be allocated to support and expand upon the important work already being done by LGBTIQ+ community, volunteer and mutual aid organisations. This could include: appointing LGBTIQ+ liaison personnel within COVID-19 recovery groups to build strategic partnerships and facilitate knowledge sharing, linking government and non-government activities, and targeting support measures where they are most needed and will be most effective.

For longer-term change, policies cannot continue being based on assumptions that populations are cisgender and heterosexual. They must not only include and account for LGBTIQ+ needs and capacities, but must recognise diversity within the LGBTIQ+ population. “One-size-fits-all” approaches are ineffective for the broad UK population, and likewise are not appropriate for communities as diverse as LGBTIQ+. To better incorporate LGBTIQ+ diversity, SOGIESC education should be included as part of workplace training programmes for government and crisis management organisations. Co-production of policies should also be a goal; involving communities and harnessing community wisdom is an important component of crisis management. Productive dialogue with LGBTIQ+ people themselves and the groups and organisations that represent them is essential for developing inclusive and efficient strategies.

Lastly, policies must shift focus away from crisis response towards risk reduction. If we were more prepared and marginalised sectors of society were better supported, we would see less severe impacts – as disaster studies have informed. We must work now to address the political, economic and social structures that place particular groups at increased vulnerability to crises, including LGBTIQ+ people, to mitigate the negative impacts of future hazards, pandemic or otherwise.

Take a look at our other blogs exploring issues relating to the coronavirus outbreak.

Policy@Manchester aims to impact lives globally, nationally and locally through influencing and challenging policymakers with robust research-informed evidence and ideas. Visit our website to find out more, and sign up to our newsletter to keep up to date with our latest news.

Advertisement
Posted on in big data, digital humanitarianism, Disaster management, Geography, GIS, hazards, HCRI, Humanitarianism, LGBTI, mapping, natural disaster management, OpenStreetMap, Publication, Queer, resilience, SMEM, Uncategorized, University of Manchester, VGI, volunteered geographic information

Online tools can help people in disasters, but do they represent everyone? (article in The Conversation)

This article originally appeared in The Conversation.
Billy Tusker Haworth, University of Manchester, Christine Eriksen, University of Wollongong, Scott McKinnon, University of Wollongong

With natural hazard and climate-related disasters on the rise, online tools such as crowdsourced mapping and social media can help people understand and respond to a crisis. They enable people to share their location and contribute information.

But are these tools useful for everyone, or are some people marginalised? It is vital these tools include information provided from all sections of a community at risk.

Current evidence suggests that is not always the case.

Online tools let people help in disasters

Social media played an important role in coordinating response to the 2019 Queensland floods and the 2013 Tasmania bushfires. Community members used Facebook to coordinate sharing of resources such as food and water.

Crowdsourced mapping helped in response to the humanitarian crisis after the 2010 Haiti earthquake. Some of the most useful information came from public contributions.

Twitter provided similar critical insights during Hurricane Irma in South Florida in 2017.

Research shows these public contributions can help in disaster risk reduction, but they also have limitations.

In the rush to develop new disaster mitigation tools, it is important to consider whether they will help or harm the people most vulnerable in a disaster.

Who is vulnerable?

Extreme natural events, such as earthquakes and bushfires, are not considered disasters until vulnerable people are exposed to the hazard.

To determine people’s level of vulnerability we need to know:

  1. the level of individual and community exposure to a physical threat
  2. their access to resources that affect their capacity to cope when threats materialise.

Some groups in society will be more vulnerable to disaster than others. This includes people with immobility issues, caring roles, or limited access to resources such as money, information or support networks.

When disaster strikes, the pressure on some groups is often magnified.

The devastating scenes in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria in 2017 revealed the vulnerability of children in such disasters.

Unfortunately, emergency management can exacerbate the vulnerability of marginalised groups. For example, a US study last year showed that in the years after disasters, wealth increased for white people and declined for people of colour. The authors suggest this is linked to inequitable distribution of emergency and redevelopment aid.

Policies and practice have until recently mainly been written by, and for, the most predominant groups in our society, especially heterosexual white men.

Research shows how this can create gender inequities or exclude the needs of LGBTIQ communities, former refugees and migrants or domestic violence victims.

We need to ask: do new forms of disaster response help everyone in a community, or do they reproduce existing power imbalances?

Unequal access to digital technologies

Research has assessed the “techno-optimism” – a belief that technologies will solve our problems – associated with people using online tools to share information for disaster management.

These technologies inherently discriminate if access to them discriminates.

In Australia, the digital divide remains largely unchanged in recent years. In 2016-17 nearly 1.3 million households had no internet connection.

Lower digital inclusion is seen in already vulnerable groups, including the unemployed, migrants and the elderly.

Global internet penetration rates show uneven access between economically poorer parts of the world, such as Africa and Asia, and wealthier Western regions.

Representations of communities are skewed on the internet. Particular groups participate with varying degrees on social media and in crowdsourcing activities. For example, some ethnic minorities have poorer internet access than other groups even in the same country.

For crowdsourced mapping on platforms such as OpenStreetMap, studies find participation biases relating to gender. Men map far morethan women at local and global scales.

Research shows participation biases in community mapping activities towards older, more affluent men.

Protect the vulnerable

Persecuted minorities, including LGBTIQ communities and religious minorities, are often more vulnerable in disasters. Digital technologies, which expose people’s identities and fail to protect privacy, might increase that vulnerability.

Unequal participation means those who can participate may become further empowered, with more access to information and resources. As a result, gaps between privileged and marginalised people grow wider.

For example, local Kreyòl-speaking Haitians from poorer neighbourhoods contributed information via SMS for use on crowdsourced maps during the 2010 Haiti earthquake response.

But the information was translated and mapped in English for Western humanitarians. As they didn’t speak English, vulnerable Haitians were further marginalised by being unable to directly use and benefit from maps resulting from their own contributions.

Participation patterns in mapping do not reflect the true makeup of our diverse societies. But they do reflect where power lies – usually with dominant groups.

Any power imbalances that come from unequal online participation are pertinent to disaster risk reduction. They can amplify community tensions, social divides and marginalisation, and exacerbate vulnerability and risk.

With greater access to the benefits of online tools, and improved representation of diverse and marginalised people, we can better understand societies and reduce disaster impacts.

We must remain acutely aware of digital divides and participation biases. We must continually consider how these technologies can better include, value and elevate marginalised groups.

____________________________________________________________________________________________


Billy Tusker Haworth
Lecturer in GIS and Disaster Management, University of Manchester

Christine Eriksen
Senior Lecturer in Geography and Sustainable Communities, University of Wollongong

Scott McKinnon
Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Wollongong
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Billy Tusker Haworth previously received funding from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre.
Christine Eriksen receives funding from the Australian Research Council (DE150100242, DP170100096).
Scott McKinnon has previously worked on projects funded by the Australian Research Council.
University of Wollongong provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.
University of Manchester provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.
Posted on in Disaster management, Geography, hazards, HCRI, natural disaster management, resilience, Uncategorized, University of Manchester

An interview with Mr Chad Simpson, Graduate Contingency Planning Officer at Westminster City Council, London, and former MSc International Disaster Management student at HCRI.

DSC_5480

Westminster, London. Photo credit: Billy Haworth

Billy: What does your role at Westminster City Council involve?

Chad: I’m a Graduate Contingency Planning Officer and my main duty is to support the Contingency Planning team with the delivery of emergency planning and business continuity work.

Contingency planning falls under the CONTEST team, which is the government’s counter-terrorist strategy. Contingency Planning represents the ‘Prepare’ portion (preparing for an attack), and at the council I work alongside ‘Prevent’ (attempting to prevent attacks from occurring). Externally we work with ‘Pursue’ and ‘Protect’, who are various parts of the police, intelligence services and central government.

Aside from that we have general day-to-day tasks, which have an overall aim of increasing/maintaining/ensuring resilient standards across the borough and the city. They include arranging and attending training and exercises for local authority staff and our partners. We maintain the records, plans, databases, equipment and rotas, which are used during an emergency response. We also write new and update existing emergency and business continuity plans. Whenever we are alerted to an incident within the borough, we coordinate the local authority response to it. There’s a fair bit of freedom for us to introduce and implement our own ‘resilience enhancing’ ideas, so soon I’ll be involved with a new community resilience project with some other areas of the council.

My role was created specifically to help implement ‘EP 2020’, which is a standardisation project among all 33 London local authorities. The project was in part driven by the events of 2017 (Grenfell and numerous terror attacks). The idea is that each will have a common way of operating during an emergency response. For that I help with updating our current emergency and business continuity plans, and I help create and deliver new training packages for the changing staff requirements.

What are the main disasters/emergencies that require planning for in London?

The majority of incidents are fires, power cuts, gas leaks and water leaks. They technically aren’t emergencies, but they still need a local authority response as it’s possible some sort of humanitarian response is required. At the very least these incidents will need input from other parts of the council, such as the cleansing team to clear up debris from a fire, or the highways team to close roads and repair street furniture. These things are common in all parts of London, but slightly more so in Westminster because of the population density.

Westminster is fairly unique among the London local authorities. We have a very socially and economically diverse borough which includes really deprived areas all the way up to the Royal Family. The residential population is 250,000, and 1 million people pass through the borough each working day. 98% of the UK’s annual tourist population visit the borough. We’re home to the UK government and numerous foreign political entities. We have the greatest concentration of theatres, cinemas, restaurants, bars and clubs in the country, and a major portion of the businesses in London. All of these factors mean that there’s a bit more to do here compared to some of the other boroughs. Aside from the incidents mentioned above, Westminster has a lot of protests and demonstrations – even more so now in the run up to Brexit. These require constant monitoring by us and our security partners.

There are a set of more serious hazards and threats which affect Westminster and the wider city. These can be found in the London Risk Register. This is derived from a National Risk Register and a National Risk Assessment, which is classified. There’s a Westminster specific version which is also classified. The biggest risks are from pandemic influenza, space weather, power failure, flooding and malicious attacks. My personal favourite is severe space weather, which has the potential to disable Global Navigation Satellite Systems (like GPS). This could potentially have an immeasurable list of quite bad cascading impacts… (if you want to know more look here https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12643/severe-space-weather-events-understanding-societal-and-economic-impacts-a and https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/services/public-sector/emergencies/space-weather/impacts)

There is a generic plan to deal with most of the things you find in the risk register, but we also have a few specific plans for things which need extra attention. They include a pandemic flu, some specific exotic diseases, flooding and a few other things. I can’t go into much detail on these.

How important is it for societies to be prepared for disaster?

I think it’s essential for societies to prepare as best as possible for disaster. At the very least, societies must recognise and fully appreciate the risks and threats they face. There needs to be the ability to continue to deliver basic/essential functions during stressful times. If this doesn’t happen, it is incredibly hard to recover to a pre-disaster state, let alone progress to a more resilient state.

From your perspective, what is contingency planning and why is it important for disaster risk reduction?

Contingency planning is about recognising and assessing the risks posed by hazards and threats, and creating and implementing plans designed to minimise the impact of those events on day-to-day life, should they ever occur. We have a legal requirement for emergency planning under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

Contingency planning has its place, but I think disaster risk reduction is about much more. My job focuses on preparation and response, after hazards and threats have already struck. This reflects the fact that the whole ‘London resilience system’ is based on the disaster cycle. Disaster risk reduction should be about managing risks rather than managing hazards. In my opinion, there needs to be a holistic approach to disaster risk reduction. I think we could benefit by looking more closely at the underlying pressures and causes of the issues we face, something more like the pressure and release model. Those tasked with managing resilience need to pay more attention to tackling underlying societal issues. Take the Grenfell Tower fire for example. We were well-prepared to deal with fires and we do so very successfully every day. However, there were other things which increased the risk of the disaster occurring, like the lack of good quality affordable housing. The condition of the block was a direct contributor to the disaster. Housing quality isn’t an emergency planning issue, but it does affect overall resilience. Would the fire have been so significant if housing was up to standard? Probably not. I sense that things are gradually going towards this holistic way of thinking. London is one of the members of 100 Resilient Cities, which is all about increasing resilience by looking at ‘acute shocks and chronic stresses’ together.

What does the planning process look like at Westminster City Council – what steps are involved in creating a contingency plan?

Once a risk/threat has been identified, a working group will be set up which will involve industry and academic experts on the subject matter. This is usually done at a national or a pan-London level. They will analyse the issue and then the planners will work backward from there. Take ‘space weather’ for example (check it out in the London risk register for more info). The group will identify the possible impacts of an episode of severe space weather. Just as an example, electricity could be out for up to two months, GPS could be out for days, we’d have severe disruption to aviation and we’d lose mobile phones and internet for some time. Planners would look at the consequences of these things; no clean water, no money, no public transport, no fuel… From that, they would take essential parts of existing plans – we already have plans for water shortages, travel disruption and fuel shortages. This part of the process is quite long and involves all the relevant category 1 and 2 responders. Once you have a decent draft ready, you can begin a more formal emergency planning process. The official emergency planning guidance from the Cabinet Office is what all category 1 and 2 responders should be adhering to. There’s a ‘planning cycle’ – similar to the disaster cycle, which is a good way of organising the planning process.

What challenges do you face in preparing disaster plans?

Convincing people/organisations that contingency planning and business continuity is important – contingency planning is my primary job so it’s my priority, but for most others it’s just another task in addition to the long list of things they have to do in order for their organisation to function.

How do you test whether a plan will be effective?

To test plans we run table-top or live exercises. With a table-top we cram in a load of different scenarios in a short space of time. We get the opportunity to brainstorm scenarios and think of all the possible consequences in an informal setting. Live exercises are great once we have a better idea of what we’re doing. They give us a bit of experience with carrying out our roles, and we can sort out any practical issues we hadn’t thought of at a table-top. It’s better to sort out issues in a run-through where we can make mistakes, rather than a real emergency.

There are a number of regular exercises we take part in, such as Project Argus and Project Griffin (to do with terrorism), and Safer City (an annual London-wide exercise). We might also run a table-top before a specific planned event. I was involved in a table-top exercise for London’s New Year’s Eve celebrations (my first big event), and it gave me a lot of insight into where I fit within the whole operation and the practicalities of implementing certain plans.

A good example of why this is important is the Manchester Arena bombing. A few months before the attack there was a terror training exercise based on a marauding gunman attack. The actual method of attack was different to the real thing, but the mechanisms of response were tested. Any issues they found could be ironed out and it was an opportunity for response personnel to practice things they’d learnt in a realistic scenario.

At what point is a plan put into action? Is there a particular trigger?

We could announce a major incident if we felt it was necessary to do so, as could any of the category 1 responders. There are some specific events, like terrorism, which automatically trigger plans.

However, it isn’t really that common for us to activate plans. The majority of things we deal with are planned events like Winter Wonderland and British Summertime in Hyde Park, protests and demonstrations, or incidents like gas leaks and burst water mains which aren’t severe enough for plan activation. Since I’ve joined there hasn’t been an emergency severe enough to activate plans.

How often are plans reviewed and/or updated?

We review them constantly. A lot of them contain things like contact details and addresses which change all the time so we need to stay on top of those. Road layouts and maps are often involved, and they also change quite a lot. If we receive new intelligence or advice from our partners, we need to update plans to include that. The major plans like JESIP and LESLP are reviewed every 4 years by the London Resilience Team, and we react to whatever changes they make with those.

You studied at HCRI, completing the MSc International Disaster Management in 2018. How did your studies at HCRI prepare you for your current role at Westminster City Council?

Overall, I think my dissertation project best prepared me for my job because I hadn’t really done much to do with emergency planning in the UK before that. I taught myself about how disaster management works here, and I tailored it to be as relevant as possible to the area I wanted to work in. It was also brilliant for networking and I gained a lot of industry contacts who helped me get to where I am now. I’m still in contact with many of them and a few are my colleagues now. Aside from that, the Emergency Humanitarianism Assistance module gave me the best practical experience. From that I gained experience of working with partners and of contributing to multiple simultaneous workstreams, both of those are very relevant for me now. It also gave me a bit of a taste of the fluidity of disaster situations and the need to be able to rapidly adapt to that. Disaster Governance introduced me to a lot of politics and socio-economics which is really useful for working in local government. Both Disaster Management: Theory and Application and Cultures and Disasters were incredibly useful, as they introduced me to a few new ideas about alternative ways of operating. Thanks to those I’m definitely able to think more critically about current practices and policies than I otherwise would be. I’m more aware of the humanitarian side of emergency planning thanks to those modules. I think I’m probably more aware of the challenges and issues certain demographics could face in disaster scenarios.

For your dissertation you examined the impacts of austerity on disaster resilience in London. Can you explain a bit more about the project: the context and importance of the topic, what you did, and what you found?

The aim was to see how cuts to local government budgets had impacted resilience in London. Since the start of the austerity period in 2010 there have been numerous claims that resilience has been severely degraded by cuts. The Grenfell Tower fire was a pivotal moment in all of that, as the scale of the disaster as well as the poor response to it, seems to be quite closely related to the way austerity was implemented. I used the Pressure and Release model to understand the context in which austerity sits. I used Grenfell as an example of a disaster created by root causes (austerity), dynamic pressures (reduced budgets for the fire brigade and local authority, building control and general health and safety) and unsafe conditions (flammable building materials, inadequate fire prevention measures and inadequate disaster response).

The results showed that London remained a resilient city in spite of austerity, even though the level of resilience had decreased. There was also a lot of uncertainty around how much longer the city would remain resilient in the face of further funding reductions. I also uncovered a few issues with disaster management in general. The biggest is to do with ‘resilience’. Nobody seems to have a shared understanding of what the word means, or what resilience actually is. It forms a massive part of disaster risk reduction policy all over the world, but there is no consensus surrounding resilience as a concept. Is it a state, a process or an outcome? How can we quantify and measure it? Is there any real way of knowing that a particular action will increase resilience by a specific amount?

Lastly, can you briefly describe how you acquired your job and what the job search process involved? Do you have any tips for other students wanting a career in the emergency management sector?

I was sent links to the job advertisement by a few of the people I interviewed for my dissertation. I hadn’t really started properly job searching because I wanted a break after my dissertation. It was the first job I applied for and luckily I got an interview. I certainly wasn’t close to being the most qualified person interviewed, so don’t rule yourself out just because your degree/experiences aren’t exactly the same as the role you’re applying for. You will have gained a lot of transferable skills.

Make your dissertation as relevant as possible to the area you want to work in. Lots of organisations are really keen to conduct research but they usually don’t have the time or resources to actually do it. Approach them and ask them if there is anything you could research for them – at the very least they might have a chat with you and give you some ideas. They might even provide funding for you to research a topic on their behalf. It’s also a great way to network and form relationships with professionals already in the industry.

I’m more than happy to talk to anyone about applying for jobs or anything else I’ve mentioned. Ask Billy for my contact details.

Posted on in Conference, Disaster management, Geography, GIS, hazards, HCRI, natural disaster management, presentation, Publication, resilience, SMEM, University of Manchester, University of Sydney, VGI, volunteered geographic information

Contributions of volunteered geographic information (VGI) to community disaster resilience: The good, the bad, and the uncertain. (#GISRUK2018 conference poster)

Below is a poster I prepared on some work following my PhD research into volunteered geographic information and disaster risk reduction. The work is co-authored by Eleanor Bruce and Josh Whittaker. It was displayed at the 26th GIScience Research UK Conference, University of Leicester, April 2018.
Download the PDF version here: Haworth et al_GISRUK2018_poster

Haworth et al_GISRUK2018_poster

Posted on in Disaster management, Geography, hazards, HCRI, LGBTI, natural disaster management, resilience, University of Manchester

Challenges for disaster management research, policy and practice: a call for new perspectives

Dr Billy Tusker Haworth, Lecturer and Programme Director MSc International Disaster Management, Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute, University of Manchester.
E: billy.haworth@manchester.ac.uk, Twitter: @BillyTusker
This post originally appeared on the HCRI blog.

Disaster management, in theory and in practice, is complex to say the least. While there are many things that are done well and are well-understood, many challenges remain for researchers, policy makers, and emergency practitioners. Even as a Lecturer in Disaster Management and Programme Director for a Masters programme specifically focused on International Disaster Management, I do not purport to be an expert on most aspects of the field. Drawing from my own research and wider reading, teaching, observations made at academic and industry conferences, and experiences with emergency organisations, my aim for this post is to reflect on four aspects of disaster management that I think are problematic, challenging for the field, or in need of improvement for more effective disaster management. These words are merely one academic’s musings on where further research and/or policy attention may be warranted, and I welcome any comments or discussions from others.

  1. Can we bounce past resilience yet?
    The concept of resilience has come into vogue in disaster research and practice over the past decade and now dominates policy agendas throughout the world (e.g. Sendai framework). Resilience has great merit in application to disaster management in theory.  It is not difficult to see how either of the most popular conceptualisations of resilience can be useful in aiding understanding of disasters; resilience as the ability of a system (or community, or individual) to either absorb stress and resist significant disruption (social-ecological perspective), or to ‘bounce back’ to normal functioning following a shock (engineering perspective). However, the application of these concepts to disaster management, both in policy interpretations and in practical measures to ‘build’ resilience, remains a challenge.There are numerous extant critiques of resilience in the disaster literature, many of which I agree with. These include, among others, a lack of consensus over what resilience actually is, that resilience definitions routinely combine elements of both ecological and engineering resilience (such as the definition adopted by UNISDR) but these are actually somewhat contradictory ideas, that measuring resilience is too difficult, and the question of whether it is appropriate for people to ‘bounce back’ to their pre-disaster conditions, which for many may be a highly vulnerable and undesirable state. The counter to this last critique has been proposals of revised interpretations of resilience as ‘building back better’ or ‘bouncing forward’.For me the central problem with resilience lies in a series of disconnects. I perceive a disconnect between what resilience refers to in academic conceptualisations and how these are interpreted and applied in disaster policies, and I see a further disconnect between resilience in policy and what it looks like, or how it is implemented and/or achieved in practice. I have heard numerous emergency practitioners in Australia and the UK say in public forums that they do not know what resilience is, or that the field is struggling to comprehend resilience approaches, yet these are the people responsible for implementing (and often devising) policies centred around resilience. I myself often find it difficult to see concrete connections between the theoretical understandings of resilience in academic literature and ‘resilience building activities’ in practice, which often appear to be increasingly about shifting the responsibility of emergency agencies over to the public. It is often unclear in resilience policies how one should go about actually implementing ‘resilience building’ at all. This, I argue, causes confusion, and without clear means for achieving the goals of resilience policies, they remain ineffective and draw attention away from developing more meaningful approaches.

    Whether resilience is just a buzzword, or whether or not policy interpretations and implementations align with academic theory may or may not be important, if whatever the strategies are in practice achieve their aims of decreasing disaster impacts for communities. But in terms of the amount of attention given to the concept in research and in practice versus the measurable benefits for reducing disaster impacts, perhaps it is time we moved the debate on and bounced right on past resilience (in theory, at least).

  1. Can we more meaningfully include the public in disaster risk reduction?
    Coupled with the growing resilience agenda has been a push to increase community engagement in disaster risk reduction, with research demonstrating that information dissemination alone is insufficient for meaningful risk reduction and disaster preparedness action. Approaches centred on community engagement are becoming increasingly present in emergency organisations, likely with varying success (the Tasmania Fire Service’s Bushfire Ready Neighbourhoods programme appears to me to be one of the better ones).

mapping Bushfire Ready Neighbourhoods community engagement activities: participatory mapping (image credit: Billy Haworth).

In Australia and elsewhere, the push for increased community engagement presents in concert with broader policy agendas of shared responsibility. As a policy shared responsibility emphasises that the burden of emergency management and risk reduction should be shouldered by all parties involved, including national, state, and local government, as well as other stakeholders, businesses, communities, households and individuals, while recognising that the weight of responsibility and expected tasks looks different for these different groups. Similar to my thoughts on resilience, I argue there are differences between shared responsibility and community engagement in theory and policy and how they appear in practice. Scholars have critiqued shared responsibility as being more akin to the public ‘doing what agencies want them to’ (like creating their own emergency plans in order to better-help themselves), rather than sharing of much at all, and state that in order to share responsibility for disaster resilience, control over risk management decisions, actions and processes also needs to be shared. In disaster management at present, this largely doesn’t occur.

When citizens are engaged in disaster management and have been involved by their own volition, they are often seen as problematic or disruptive by authorities, as has been the case with some instances of spontaneous volunteering or the public’s use of social media during crises. While a policy shift has occurred from response to disaster risk reduction and resilience building (community engagement) over the last decade or so, I believe considerable cultural change in emergency organisations is still required to more meaningfully value and incorporate citizens and their knowledge into disaster risk reduction.

The field of citizen science offers important lessons learnt of relevance to disaster management. Citizen science refers to the practice of engaging members of the public in scientific research. Thanks to citizens observing, collecting, sharing and analysing data, a vast range of high-quality scientific research has been completed, much of which would not have been possible otherwise. If disaster management valued community knowledge like citizen science does, protocols and systems could be established to promote and encourage the most useful citizen practices and allow for improved harnessing of citizen action and community-supplied information.

  1. Can we better-incorporate and appreciate gender and sexual diversity in disaster management (policies, organisations, and research)?
    Here, there are three areas I believe need further attention: 1) considerations of gender and sexual minorities in responding to and managing disasters, 2) diversity of personnel in emergency organisations, and 3) diversity in research and teaching. Sexual and gender minorities are commonly recognised as a vulnerable group in disaster policies. Yet, research into LGBTIQ experiences in disasters highlights significant policy and practice failings (such as the lack of planning and provision for the safety of transgender people when using bathrooms in evacuation or refuge centres). These failings are often due to hetero-normative assumptions around things like what a ‘family’ looks like (e.g. a family with two mums may not be recognised in the same way as a family with male and female parents in policies in some jurisdictions). Heterogeneity within groups such as ‘gender and sexual minorities’, and that disaster risk is also experienced unequally within vulnerable populations, also needs further recognition in disaster policy (and in research!). Lesbians, bisexual women and queers of colour, for instance, were more vulnerable during Hurricane Katrina than white middle-class gay men due to lower incomes and the neighbourhoods where they lived being subject to increased flooding. Lastly here, and quite simply, failure to recognise people as anything other than male or female in disaster policy terminology highlights the shortfall between operational disaster management and the actual needs and makeup of contemporary societies.

blue diamond.jpg The LGBT+ rights group Blue Diamond Society in Nepal established a camp for LGBT+ people following earthquakes in 2015, as neither the UN nor the government delivered non-binary aid, despite Nepal legally recognising transgender people (image credit: Blue Diamond Society).

Emergency organisations have made concerted efforts in recent years to increase diversity in their ranks, particularly related to gender. But these efforts have largely been flawed (or at least limited) from the beginning in that they frequently consider gender diversity as an issue concerned only with increasing the proportions of women in organisations. While this is certainly needed, there is no question (in many societies at least, and especially in the West), that there are people who do not align with or identify as either of these binary terms. So, why is the discussion around gender diversity so often limited to male or female? I have witnessed a number of disaster management conference sessions and panels on “Diversity” that have not only focused almost solely on gender in the absence of other diversity challenges, such as increasing representation of sexual minorities, racial and ethnic groups, indigenous peoples, religious affiliations, or people living with disabilities, but have based diversity discussions on quotas for number of women in organisations. Such a narrow framing of diversity has a range of negative implications.

For issues of trust, risk communication, and the heeding of warnings, it is important that the people serving a community ‘look like’ the community, and thus in increasingly diverse societies, there needs to be greater representation of diversity in all forms in emergency organisations. In Australia at least, it is no secret that disaster management in practice is dominated by older straight white males, which may be difficult for many in communities to relate to. A lack of diversity also impacts the amount of and types of people who volunteer in disaster organisations. Volunteers are vital to many organisations, but again, if organisations don’t represent them, community members may not be inclined to join. Significantly, if the people designing and implementing disaster policies do not represent or at least appreciate the diversity of populations they are working for, disaster management in policy and practice will remain limited in its ability to adequately deliver its aims of decreasing disaster impacts for communities (as per my first point in this section).

In academia, I believe we can do better here too. Emergency organisations are not unique in their often narrow binary framings of gender. In terms of further work, we need more research into experiences of gender and sexual minorities in disaster management in general, and into more nuanced and specific questions in a variety of contexts, such as exploration of differences between groups under the LGBTIQ umbrella, and further, between individuals within each of those sub-categories. In teaching on disaster management we could look to include perspectives from a more diverse range of scholars from various backgrounds. While I haven’t surveyed the suggested readings for my courses, my feeling is the author list is likely dominated by cisgender males, probably Caucasian and heterosexual too.

  1. Can we encourage more comprehensive and better-informed media reporting of disasters beyond crisis response?
    Mainstream media reporting on disaster management largely focuses on immediate response to emergencies. I appreciate this may make for a more exciting news story, but this presents a limited view of disaster management, which is complex and involves so much more than emergency response. Promotion of activities like disaster preparedness in news stories may be helpful for achieving some of the policy objectives mentioned above, such as disaster risk reduction and community resilience. Further, disaster impacts do not stop when the journalists move on, and the effects of disasters extend into the future, often for years. Yet, disaster recovery stories are rarely told (there are exceptions of course, e.g. Al Jazeera produced a number of follow-up stories in the years after the Haiti earthquake in 2010).

    Media tend to over-report the experiences of ‘home citizens’ in disaster areas, for example the stories of British citizens impacted by Hurricane Irma in the United States, or Australian and British tourists in areas impacted by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. My colleague, Gemma Sou, has written on these and related topics, and calls for greater recognition of the impacts to local people in disaster regions. Further to this, I argue that increased emphasis on home citizens in the media discourages people at ‘home’ from relating risk to themselves (by ‘home’, I mean the country the media outlet is largely reporting to, e.g. BBC to Britain). Reporting on tourists in disasters contributes to a mentality that disasters happen ‘over there’ and people who go ‘over there’ are at risk, but they are safe at home, which is not an accurate narrative.

    Finally, western media could present a more global picture of disasters (particularly those claiming to deliver ‘world news’). During Hurricane Irma in the US, for instance, there were several ongoing disasters with impacts on populations comparable to Irma that received substantially less coverage (e.g. cholera outbreak in Yemen, floods in India, Bangladesh and Nepal, a mudslide in Sierra Leone). Alluding to my points in section 3, media could also present stories on and from more diverse perspectives in delivering more global pictures of disasters (Research has shown LGBTIQ narratives are rarely told in mainstream disaster reporting, for instance, and news media influences both public understandings and disaster policies). Of course, I recognise the commercial impetus that influences what and how journalists and media outlets report on disasters, and the reality of providing content that will satisfy readers (paying customers). I would question, however, the role of national, largely government (or tax payer) funded news broadcasters. Are national broadcasters like the BBC or ABC (Australia) presenting the kind of balanced coverage of disasters we (I, at least) might hope for from a non-commercial service?

These are just some of the current research, policy, and practice challenges I perceive for disaster management, and of course there are many more. While we continue to conduct our work and engage in this field, whether it be through policy and practice, academic research, or studies at HCRI and elsewhere, I encourage us to be aware: aware of our relative positions and perspectives, and to increasingly consider the perspectives of others. I started this post by saying that disaster management is complex, and I will finish in recognition of that by calling for greater integration between individuals and sectors involved in disaster management, including academia, government and disaster organisations, the private sector, and, significantly, citizens from all walks of life, because complex problems are rarely solved with simple solutions.