Hazards and the Built Environment: Attaining Built‐in Resilience

Citation

Gaillard, J.C. (2011), "Hazards and the Built Environment: Attaining Built‐in Resilience", Disaster Prevention and Management, Vol. 20 No. 2, pp. 215-216. https://doi.org/10.1108/09653561111126148

One of the most pressing contemporary challenges of disaster risk reduction is to achieve a better integration of top‐down and bottom‐up actions. This concern spans all dimensions and sectors of disaster risk reduction and requires an increasing dialogue between a wide array of stakeholders ranging from scientists with different backgrounds to practitioners and local communities. Despite the growing interest for this issue in the academic literature and policy documents, little attention has been given so far to the particular context of the built‐environment.

Hazards and the Built Environment: Attaining Built‐in Resilience, edited by Lee Bosher, is a unique attempt at filling this gap, at least in the scientific literature. It compiles 17 articles written by some of the leading scholars in the field. It is arranged in two major sections which review structural and non‐structural “adaptation” to enhance the “resilience” of the built environment in the face of natural hazards.

This book stands out by its blending of bottom‐up reflections with top‐down approaches. This is of particular importance in a field where planners, architects and engineers usually dominate through frameworks that give little opportunity for the integration of local initiatives. Both initial chapters by Bosher and Alexander provide excellent backgrounds to the contemporary context of disaster risk reduction in urban environment.

Eventually and foremost, Hazards and the Built Environment: Attaining Built‐in Resilience shows how local knowledge, traditions and practices are valuable in the face of natural hazards because they are embedded in a particular social and cultural context which top‐down planning often fails to recognise. Yet it also documents how, in certain instances, it is crucial to input scientific and engineering knowledge to lessen vulnerability. Articles by Norton and Chantry, Jigyasu, Pampanin, Soetanto et al., McCarthy et al., and Petal et al. provide concrete examples of projects and practices where both bottom‐up and top‐down actions are integrated to better reduce disaster risks. Case studies are drawn from a wide array of countries ranging from the most affluent to the less affluent, including Italy, the UK, New Zealand, Turkey, Tajikistan, India, Vietnam, Nepal, and Indonesia. The geographical scope of the case studies is a significant strength of this book. Indeed, if the importance of preserving local knowledge is usually recognised in the South or among traditional societies, it is often dismissed in the North where overarching emphasis is given to scientific knowledge.

The last article of the book, written by Wamsler, further suggests a tangible framework for integrating disaster risk reduction into urban planning and development. This very good chapter is a step forward to bringing the science and best practices of the previous articles into sound policies. A couple of articles further emphasize the role of national authorities in scaling up and spreading best practices from local to national scale. National governments should play a role of crucial importance in bridging the gap between sound local practices and improving policies to the benefit of the largest number of people worldwide. In that sense, articles by Le Masurier et al. and Fox show that legal frameworks should give an increasing importance to local initiatives while Lewis's outstanding contribution emphasises the importance of good governance in reducing the risk of disasters – disasters that may actually easily be prevented by ensuring the application of existing laws and granting to the most vulnerable a better access to locally available means of protection.

Such frameworks are of paramount importance in bridging the gap between top‐down and bottom‐up approaches to reduce disaster risk in urban settings. However, implementing frameworks like these usually requires tools which facilitate the collaboration of all stakeholders mentioned throughout the book, i.e. scientists, NGOs, international organizations, national and local authorities, local communities. Some tools are suggested all through the different chapters, for example hands‐on models, shake tables, Geographic Information Systems, and charrettes. Yet many readers, especially amongst practitioners, would have expected at least a specific chapter dedicated to these tools.

However, Hazards and the Built Environment: Attaining Built‐in Resilience still goes much beyond most existing volumes in broadcasting the importance of integrative or “holistic perspectives”. Bosher's final agenda for “building‐in resilience” further provides a very good outline for future research and practice in the field. For all these reasons, this book as is a must‐read for all scholars and practitioners interested in disaster risk reduction in urban environment.