Reducing urban risk through community participation

The project activities included the following
A preliminary Baseline Survey was conducted in the two communities to assess behaviour, attitudes, perception and awareness level, frequency of occurrence of hazards, reasons for the vulnerability, the social and civic set-up in place, and the economic status of community members. The survey provided a platform for carrying out the risk assessment and for appraising the project on completion.

Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRS) exercises such as informal transect walks, focus group meetings, risk mapping, hazard ranking, seasonal disaster time line and children's drawings were conducted in both the communities. It was discovered that community mapping, informal walks and focus group meetings were the most comprehensive means of eliciting community-level information. Of these, the depth of information provided by the focus group meetings was the greatest. The range of PRA exercises ensured perceptional inputs from various cross sections of the community. Children's drawings were useful to find out the view that tomorrow's citizens had regarding the safety of their habitat.

Risk Assessment was carried out taking into account citizens' perceptions and expert views. It comprised identification of inventories of vulnerabilities and capacities of institutions, communities and infrastructure; key hazards, risks and perceptions of risks by key factors, etc. It was found that risk perception is dependent on a large set of community characteristics: economic insecurity, length of exposure, return period of disaster, the community's perception of its own capacity to deal with disasters, etc.

Action Planning Exercises were conducted within the community as part of a workshop spreading over three days. This was an attempt to introduce risk reduction measures in urban planning through community participation. The techniques was to combine the rapid development of action-oriented initiatives (in the form of a community action plan) with sustainable risk-reduction measures. The measures that were listed at the end of the workshop included physical improvement, strengthening of community structures and the identification of community led environmental improvement initiatives. Utilizing action planning ensured the involvement of all key factors in decision making: community members, government authorities and NGOs.

Currently, as part of the Citizen's Action Plan implementation process, mobilization of the larger community and related agencies is in progress. Links have been established with the local government and NGOs for eliciting their support in the initiative. The government has expressed its willingness to incorporate the larger of the Community Action Plans in its own agenda, and as a result of this advocacy, the community will soon have flood protection works and fire risk reduction programmes in place. Smaller issues, such as sanitation, have been picked upon by the community, as targets for local action through neighbourhood committees. These committees will also act as local disaster management teams to counter the threat of floods and fires in future. The community hopes that the coming years will be safer ones, and that so through their own making.