In general, it appeared that the PHVCA process is more concerned with vulnerability, capacity and, particularly, generating action than it is with hazard assessment. Two interviewees commented on this as they emphasised the importance of not focusing on hazards18:
‘I think [the point] was actually to go beyond the hazard data which obviously everyone likes to create which is nice and scientific and easy to define but even getting agreement in most countries on what the poverty indicators should be is really quite political.’ (Team Leader – CC, Research Institute B)
Only one participant19 (although it was implied by three20 others) questioned whether the emphasis on vulnerability had been at the expense of adequate hazard assessment:
‘I would say, apart from in the Philippines and maybe Bangladesh, we’ve…had a few weaknesses…because we haven’t focused enough on the hazards, particularly multi-hazard assessments’ (Adviser – Policy and Research, DRR, INGO D)
The first quotation emphasises the misplaced perception that hazard analysis is easy, which is in contrast to the challenges of assessing multi-hazards identified in Chapter 2. The quotation therefore implies a lack of appreciation for what multi-hazard assessments entail. Moreover, the first quotation points to a slight anti-science bias, which emerged subtly and, at times, more obviously during the Head Office interviews. During the interviews, there emerged a number of biases that influence the process of hazard assessment, which are discussed below.
18 Team Leader – Climate Change (Research Institute B); Policy Coordinator – DRR (INGO G)
19 Adviser – DRR Policy and Research (INGO D)
20 Adviser – Climate Change (INGO B); Adviser – Climate Change (INGO D); Director – DRR and Community Resilience (INGO I)
143 Most interviewees described similar community-based participatory methods for the purposes of data collection and analysis. Methods for identifying hazards over space and time include timelines, seasonal calendars, transect walks, hazard mapping and hazard prioritisation. The emphasis on facilitation in the process of hazard assessment emerged throughout the interview narratives:
‘…you have to have very strong facilitation to make the link back to the hazard.’
(Director – DMT, INGO H)
When asked what information is important to include in the assessment of hazards, those who could answer noted hazard parameters including frequency, intensity and duration. In particular, one interviewee, whose organisation has taken a more hazard focused approach to assessment, noted a variety of parameters, however their hazard-focused approach did not resonate across the interviews:
‘...in terms of characterisation, there are so much time elements...from the warning signs for warning speed of [onset] also frequency, period <unclear> these are all time element[s] – because this is where you can prepare for your contingency plan.’ (Adviser – DRR, INGO E)
Through the historical perspective of the community, multi-hazards can emerge, but subsequent analysis constitutes a series of individual hazard assessments with little regard for the interrelations between hazards:
‘...So starting off with the hazard assessment and then going through the various steps in terms of understanding vulnerabilities to that hazard and then looking at another hazard and this sort of iterative process that would over time highlight what are the vulnerabilities that are fundamental to address regardless of whichever hazard we’re focused upon in our analysis’ (DRR Consultant)
As noted above, the emphasis is upon identifying vulnerabilities common to more than one hazard. However, DRR Adviser for INGO E emphasised the need for solutions that are very hazard specific, rather than a description of generalities, but this very hazard focused approach to the PHVCAs was not representative of the rest of the interviewees.
144 The identified hazards are subsequently ranked through a prioritisation exercise. Interviewees noted that hazard prioritisation would tend to result in the consideration of the top three hazards, but that at times only the top hazard would be considered21. The quotation below exemplifies the constraints this imposes upon the analysis of multiple hazards since the organisation in question frame their assessment on the possibility of only five different hazards occurring and then focus on the top three, or the single most dominating threat as is perceived by the community:
‘Well, we sort of ask about hazards in a few different ways, it’s a bit of a triangulation but I think the most interesting one for prioritisation is the vulnerability matrix...we ask for you know five hazards and five most important resources and then they do the ranking and then we will ask, ‘what are the three priority hazards out of those five?...
So that’s the key one, but then we also look at the hazard map, so if a hazard is coming up in all those different discussions, than it’s clear that that’s one of the bigger ones, even though that’s not very scientific, it’s very qualitative approach.’ (Adviser – CCA, INGO C)
Since the PHVCA process is solution driven, the emphasis is upon identifying the top hazard to address; although, in reality, it was noted that the selected hazard may also be driven by the assumptions or biases of the partner or project managers22. Section 4.2 elucidated institutional bias, including assumptions agencies make regarding the priority hazard and the decisions regarding where to implement projects. Furthermore, one interviewee noted that the outcome of the PHVCA may be influenced by the organisational remit of the implementing NGO:
‘Nearly all organisations have a kind of organisational niche, something that they want to be known for and they think they do better…so…I really stress the need to sort of plan and differentiate between facilitating and brokering a process of community analysis…and not prejudicing…what action comes out of that.’ (Programme Policy Management Team Member, INGO F)
21 Adviser – DRR (INGO H)
22 Climate Change Policy Adviser (Development INGO)
145 Bias might also emerge from the individuals designing the toolkits (Section 4.2) as well as those facilitating the process, owing to their assumptions (and uncertainty) about different hazards:
‘So it is also [a] very important tool for us but it’s not just about climate change it is about environmental degradation, it is about disaster risk; but obviously mainly looking at disaster risk from a hydro-meteorological perspective rather than necessarily a seismic, because obviously prediction of seismic is quite difficult.’ (Research and Policy Officer, INGO H)
However, participants23 also noted the difficulty of managing communities’ expectations with regard to what concerns the NGO will be able to assist them in addressing; thus prioritising is a means of limiting these expectations.
The process of prioritisation is essentially based on the community’s perception of the threat from different hazards, comparing characteristics such as frequency and intensity or sometimes utilising a vulnerability matrix or pair-wise ranking; although at times the prioritisation of hazard will just consist of a conversation with the community24. As noted by five25 interviewees, the prioritisation is, consequently, largely qualitative, with two interviewees emphasising that it is not underpinned by science26:
‘Generally people are happy with [the method] and we’re clear, it’s not scientific, it’s consensus.’ (Adviser – Environmental Sustainability, INGO H)
The participant from Kenya (INGO C) said that feedback from partners indicated that they wanted more quantitative measures and they also criticised the tool they used because prioritisation of three hazards was too constricting. Furthermore, in environments where hazards might reoccur over different time periods, it becomes questionable whether these top
23 Adviser – DRR (INGO B)
24 The Climate Change Programme Adviser (INGO D) says that these are simply listed; the CCA Adviser (INGO C) emphasises that it is a very qualitative approach, based on what emerges from discussions with the community.
25 CCA Adviser (INGO C); Kenya staff (INGO C); DRR Adviser (INGO E); CC Policy Adviser (Development INGO)
26 Adviser – Environmental Sustainability (INGO H); Adviser – CCA (INGO C)
146 three hazards can be rigorously determined. Two interviewees27 noted that because the process relies upon community knowledge it may be strongly influenced by the occurrence of the most recent event or seasonality of events28:
‘[earthquakes] happen very, very rarely if at all. But it was extraordinary because the affect it had on the psyche of the people and in terms of what they … considered as the most sort of imminent hazards was absolutely identified as an earthquake in the months following that particular incident; whereas we’re working with communities who are living on the banks of a river which floods all the time’ (Translator (formally in programme team) providing additional information as requested by Regional Programme Manager – DRR, INGO B)
Such a perception of risk poses a challenge to the objective identification and prioritisation of hazards, which is also challenging owing to differences in frequency of occurrence and the impact of different hazards:
‘So essentially we do rank them but whether we rank them in a systematic way, I don’t think we do. I am just thinking of the situation in Haiti now and we have obviously got an earthquake which is a rare event and yet the country is sort of afflicted every year by hurricanes so how do you balance your intervention.’ (Policy Coordinator – DRR, INGO G)
Compounding this is the challenge of managing the emerging multitude of non-extreme events faced by the community (the day-to-day hazards) that readily surface during the hazard assessment process29. Lastly, the community are not passive in their participation. The DRR Adviser at INGO B noted that, at times, a community may manipulate the process so as to ensure it serves what they want, which may not necessarily lead to a reduction in risk. Thus, in spite of the intentions of the developers, it appears that the design of toolkits, compounded by biases from organisations and individuals, hinders the application of a multi-hazard approach to PHVCA. However, it is important to note that the in-country interviewees placed less
27 Regional Programme Manager – DRR (INGO B) and Policy and Research Adviser – DRR (INGO D)
28 Policy and research adviser – DRR (INGO D)
29 Project Manager – Livelihoods and Disaster Management (Development INGO)
147 emphasis on the tools and more upon the process of PHVCA, as similarly observed by Twigg and Bottomley (2011).
There was some acknowledgement of the limits of current approaches; Climate Change and Hunger Team Leader (INGO C) noted the need to develop a more methodological tool to ensure that hazards and vulnerabilities would not be missed, whilst four others30 mentioned that improvements were needed in the field of multi-hazard assessment, particularly regarding concerns over unanticipated, emergent threats:
‘I think in fairness this [tool] does keep the pages open, it does allow for genuine inclusion of every possible threat or hazard that the community might come up with.
And we have committed to address that as far as possible, but I think we can do more, I don’t know how, but I think we need to, not start from scratch, but we need to consider wider hazards, wider multiple hazards, and multiple threats that we might not expect.
And that we might not even expect the community to come up with.’ (Team Leader – Climate Change and Hunger, INGO C)
It was apparent, however, that unknown future scenarios were largely considered a concern related to climate change and not other hazards. However, the three DRR in-country interviewees discussed climatic and geophysical hazards in more equal terms and did not appear to make the same distinctions between DRR and CCA as those at Head Office.
Given the emphasis upon integrated risk and, moreover the emphasis upon climate change, it appears that agencies are attempting to move towards a better understanding of the links between hazards, the environment (i.e. conditions that exacerbate risk), vulnerability and interventions. Such a shift in approach presents an opportunity for the interrelations between hazards to be more readily identified; however, whether this emerges within PHVCAs appears to rely heavily upon facilitation as illustrated in the example of the challenge of linking vulnerability and environmental degradation to an increased frequency of disasters:
30 Adviser – Climate Change (INGO B); Policy and Research Adviser – DRR (INGO D); Team Leader – Climate Change and Hunger Team (INGO C); Director – DRR and Community Resilience (INGO I)
148
‘…and an increased population has actually contributed to the increased land degradation and consequently more hazards, more flooding and landslides. So we might easily make that connection but often you will find that communities haven’t made that connection and once that’s made, and…they start seeing how they can reduce it, [it] is quite easy.’ (Adviser – DRR, INGO B)
In relying on facilitators to help communities make these connections, there is the implication that facilitators have sufficient knowledge and understanding to identify these connections themselves; yet discussion regarding secondary or interrelated hazards did not greatly emerge during the interviews. However, some acknowledgement of hazard interrelations emerged during interviews when participants mentioned earthquake and rainfall triggered landslides31,
‘secondary or tertiary hazards’32, the influence of climate change on hazards33 and that there might be no one single cause34 of a disaster. Consideration of the cascading effect of hazards was particularly apparent during the interviews with Philippine participants:
‘…typhoon result to a multi-hazard: from typhoon of course we have rainfall, we have landslides, from landslides we have these flood the inundation of flash flood and from that another secondary or tertiary hazards will come there are other diseases after the disaster like we have this sickness related to diarrhoea…’ (Adviser – Climate Change and DRM programme, INGO G)
But, in spite of these interrelations being mentioned, it was unclear how these might be accounted for in the PHVCA process since interviewees discussed them in general terms:
‘…we try and make sure that community does really view things, everything from a multi-hazard perspective. But…for example in North India in Behar they say it’s floods,
…and yet they are in [the] seismic floor zone and that’s because nothing has happened in living memory of great significance and…the problem is…one really big earthquake…
and you might get a re-alignment of the rivers and you might get a different set of flooding anyway, it might be that one hazard triggers another so …We try and make sure it is as multi-hazard orientated as possible.’ (Director, DMT, INGO H)
31 Adviser – Climate Change Programme (INGO D); Project Manager – Livelihoods and Disaster Management (Development INGO)
32 Adviser – Climate Change and DRM Programme (INGO G, Philippines)
33 Adviser – DRR (INGO E)
34 Adviser – Climate Change Policy (Development INGO)
149 The above quotation also hints at the limits of community knowledge for multi-hazard assessments.
Given the emphasis on community knowledge for the purpose of identifying and prioritising hazards, historically, the PHVCA process has not been particularly successful at anticipating disasters:
‘one of the weak links we saw with [PHVCA] was that it wasn’t reviewing things, it wasn’t reviewing the future enough and it was doing a lot of past historical assessment based on date test historically when we don’t know, we are in un-chartered territory with a lot of these…climate variabilities.’ (Director – DMT, NGO H)
Therefore, an integral part of the PHVCA should include reviewing and updating the assessment at regular intervals.