The relevance of soft infrastructure in disaster management and risk reduction

Ullberg, Susann Baez; Warner, Jeroen

doi:10.18356/045b3351-en

Cited by 3 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…All interviews were taped and transcribed. The material was complemented with secondary data comprising studies on practical emergency management, for example, Asp et al (2015), Ivarsson (2008), Penning-Rowsell (1996) and Baez Ullberg (2016).…”

Section: Methodological Considerations and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The opposite picture is found in the Municipality of Santa Fe city that was first in introducing DRR as a core policy. Being highly vulnerable to river floods and rains, DRR has since 2008 been a “cross-sectional” issue (Santa Fe City, 2014, p. 33), which breaks with a tradition of “policy of omission” and normalization of the flood (see Baez Ullberg, 2016). Strategies were directed toward improving disaster preparedness through capacity building, and generating channels for community participation in an attempt to achieve a common understanding of risk management and respond to social demands whenever possible (see Duyne Barenstein and Rojas Rivas, 2012).…”

Section: Drr Policy and Its Institutional Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Argentina, policies usually do not survive changes in political power as a result of elections, especially not at the national level. Thus, rotation of responsibilities and the large staff turnover challenge the stability of the DRR system (Baez Ullberg, 2016). The new administration tries to differentiate itself from the previous one, and preserves the politicization culture of public life.…”

Section: Elaborating On Institutional Conditions Of Drr Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, whereas formal institutional frameworks can give some feeling of safety, they do not guarantee that actors know how to handle things on the ground, or that the available resources are sufficient or adequate. Though formal arrangements can be perceived as a form of rational security (Baez Ullberg, 2016, p. 256), they can also conceal insufficient preparedness of a more practical nature (false safety; Olsen et al , 2007, p. 73). When the achievement of interaction and collaboration is considered as a goal in itself, it can be seriously put to test during a crisis, disclosing likewise insufficient preparedness “in practice.”…”

Section: Elaborating On Institutional Conditions Of Drr Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional foundations of disaster risk reduction policy

Majo

Olsson

2019

DPM

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore and elaborate on how institutional conditions work to the advantage and disadvantage of disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies on different levels in two countries. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative case study design is used to study empirically two countries with very different traditions when it comes to political-administrative institutions: Argentina and Sweden. Findings As expected, the institutional foundations of DRR policy in Sweden are shown to be more consistent and stable than in Argentina. However, this difference is of less importance when considering the crucial role of local practices. National institutional foundations can function as support – but is not a necessary condition – for building disaster preparedness on the ground. The authors argue that national governments cannot do without institutionalized praxis-based preparedness, which is vital for both effective emergency management and learning. Originality/value This paper contributes to the disaster research debate by elaborating on institutional arrangements that can facilitate or hinder DRR strategies in a multi-level context. The main argument is that institutional practices on the ground are important to compensate for insufficient national institutions, either because they are weak or too distant from practical DRR. The authors also elaborate on how institutional practices can function as a source for learning and for building legitimate practical authority from the bottom up.

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Section: Methodological Considerations and Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Drr Policy and Its Institutional Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Elaborating On Institutional Conditions Of Drr Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Elaborating On Institutional Conditions Of Drr Policymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Institutional foundations of disaster risk reduction policy

Majo

Olsson

2019

DPM

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“…During a crisis, emergency management of CIs is even more complex due to the presence of different decisionmakers (e.g., government, first responders, and community members), characterized by a dense network of interactions among them and with the system of infrastructures [1,4]. The analysis of past disasters led researchers to investigate and model the connections between physical ("hard") infrastructures (e.g., buildings, infrastructures, and utilities) and social ("soft") infrastructures (e.g., social bonds between citizens and emergency management systems) (e.g., [12][13][14][15]). The importance of integrating social and physical components to properly model resilience attributes of infrastructural systems, using a human-centric perspective, is crucial to understand and describe system performances [16,17].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating “Hard” and “Soft” Infrastructural Resilience Assessment for Water Distribution Systems

et al. 2018

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Cities are highly dynamic systems, whose resilience is affected by the interconnectedness between “hard” and “soft” infrastructures. “Hard infrastructures” are the functional networks with physical elements providing goods or services. “Soft infrastructures” (culture, governance, and social patterns) encompass the social networks, make the hard infrastructures work, and are vital for understanding the consequences of disasters and the effectiveness of emergency management. Although the dynamic interactions between such infrastructures are highly complex in the case of the occurrence of hazardous events, it is fundamental to analyze them. The reliability of hard infrastructures during emergency management contributes to keep alive the social capital, while the community, its networks, and its own resilience influence the service provided by infrastructural systems. Resilience-thinking frameworks overcome the limits of the traditional engineering-oriented approaches, accounting for complexity of socio-technical-organizational networks, bridging the static and dynamic components of disasters across pre- and postevent contexts. The present work develops an integrated approach to operatively assess resilience for the hard and soft infrastructural systems, aiming at modeling the complexity of their interaction by adopting a graph theory-based approach and social network analysis. The developed approach has been experimentally implemented for assessing the integrated resilience of the hard/soft infrastructures during the L’Aquila 2009 earthquake.

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Integrating Soft Infrastructure in Design to Build Community Resilience in Puerto Rico

Gandhi

2024

The Urban Book Series

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The relevance of soft infrastructure in disaster management and risk reduction

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Institutional foundations of disaster risk reduction policy

Institutional foundations of disaster risk reduction policy

Integrating “Hard” and “Soft” Infrastructural Resilience Assessment for Water Distribution Systems

Integrating Soft Infrastructure in Design to Build Community Resilience in Puerto Rico

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