Factors Affecting Disaster Resilience in Oman: Integrating Stakeholder Analysis and Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping

Abstract

Planning for community resilience to disasters is a process that involves co‐ordinated action within and between relevant organizations and stakeholders, with the goal of reducing disaster risk. The effectiveness of this process is influenced by a range of factors, both positively and negatively, that need to be identified and understood so as to develop organizational capacity to build community resilience to disaster. This study investigates disaster planning and management in Oman, a country facing significant natural hazards, and with a relatively new system of institutional disaster management. Fuzzy cognitive mapping integrated with stakeholder analysis is used to identify relevant factors and their inter‐relationships, and hence provides an improved understanding of disaster governance. Developing an improved understanding of the complexity of this institutional behavior allows identification of opportunities to build greater resilience to disaster through improved planning and emergency response. We make recommendations for improved disaster management in Oman relating to governance (including improved plan dissemination and closer working with community organizations), risk assessment, public education, built environment development, and financing for disaster resilience.

Arabian Sea Tropical Cyclones: A Spatio-Temporal Analysis in Support of Natural Hazard Risk Appraisal in Oman

“…Developing an improved understanding of TC occurrence and behavior, through historical analysis of TC timing and tracks should help to build resilience to TC, and climate change, for the country. Building resilience to TC requires a much wider process of institutional organization and action, which we discuss elsewhere [33] with specific reference to Oman's natural hazard management governance. However, a key element of natural hazard risk management is an understanding of the hazard itself.…”

The impact of crisis and disasters risk management in COVID-19 times: Insights and lessons learned from Saudi Arabia

“…Many countries have developed their own DRRS to fight devastating accidents and disasters such as China [30] , Philippines [31] , Oman [32] , Singapore [2] and Czech Republic [33] . For instance, since the crisis of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), China has modernized its national emergency management system (NEMS) which revealed its efficacy in fighting COVID-19 pandemic.…”

Factors Affecting the Effectiveness of Flood Resilience Plan for Urban Sustainability of Ratnapura Municipal Council Area

“…Oman was significantly affected by severe natural disasters annually. This situation was overcome by applying planning and emergency response to achieve greater disaster resilience (Al-Manji et al, 2021). However, the disaster management and resilience programs have never accomplished the same actions, policy prominence, or obtained financial contribution rates comparable to Asia or Latin America in the Southern African region.…”