Open AccessA system dynamics approach for understanding community resilience to disaster risk
Author(s) -
Onyekachi J. Onyeagoziri,
Corrinne Shaw,
Tom Ryan
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
jàmbá
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.424
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 2072-845X
pISSN - 1996-1421
DOI - 10.4102/jamba.v13i1.1037
Subject(s) - community resilience , context (archaeology) , grounded theory , resilience (materials science) , geography , poverty , natural disaster , environmental resource management , environmental planning , sociology , qualitative research , political science , social science , engineering , environmental science , physics , archaeology , redundancy (engineering) , meteorology , law , reliability engineering , thermodynamics
The Western Cape is a dynamic province that is disaster-prone, particularly the vulnerable urban communities in and around its environs. Such communities are more vulnerable to wildfire, flooding, pandemic, natural and human-made hazards because of poverty and, consequently, poor living conditions such as overcrowding and non-understanding of community resilience. The inability of these communities to understand community resilience and withstand adversities affects the sustainability of initiatives to develop them. This study aims to identify the mechanisms influencing the level of understanding of community resilience in a vulnerable community and to contribute to the understanding of community resilience to disaster risk. Fieldwork was conducted in an informal settlement in South Africa. The research study was conducted in two cycles of data collection and analysis. Data in the form of observation notes, document analysis and interviews were analysed using grounded-theory principles. Ten inter-related variables or mechanisms emerged from the analysis. The theoretical model consists of four reinforcing (R) feedback loops (R1, R2, R3 and R4), respectively, which explain how the understanding of community resilience in the informal settlement maps on to the relative achievement systems archetype. Negative reinforcing behaviour would explain the lack of understanding of community resilience, while positive reinforcing behaviour indicates how an understanding of community resilience develops. In addition, the variable with the leverage to improve the mechanisms influencing the understanding of community resilience was found to be the ‘level of public education and awareness’. The theory of how these variables behave in context was represented as a qualitative system dynamics model.