Resilient Cities: Coping With Natural Hazards - Theme Cities: Solutions for Urban Problems - page 341

prevention saves $ 15 in post-disaster spending. Usually it takes a strong executive
or a government committed to preparedness to ensure that pre-disaster planning and
implementation does occur, rather than acting only after a crisis.

9﻽7﻽4﻽2 Building Institutional and Organizational Capacity

The scale of the problems posed by natural hazards means that the people and their
organizations in areas potentially affected need to be involved in co-operative rela-
tionships to build institutional capacity to mitigate risks. From medieval times Dutch
reclamation projects have recovered land from flood plains and the sea, which was
only achieved by cooperation and organization, leading to water boards to manage
the reclamation process, and the subsequent monitoring and maintenance of dykes
and other water control systems. Governments in most developed countries, at a na-
tional, regional and local level, have created Emergency Organizations to deal with
the effects of disasters, whether from environmental or human causes, which link
with existing safety services, such as police, paramedics, fire brigades, and medi-
cal facilities. In some countries and cities there is often an Emergency Information
Day to remind people of the role of the agency and its importance. These organi-
zations have been slow to emerge in cities in the developing world, for existing
safety and health agencies are often overwhelmed by day-to-day problems. Hence
international aid agencies such as Oxfam and various organs of the United Nations
have stepped in and have encouraged the formation of local Disaster Preparation
Committees to involve local communities in the risk reduction process. In the Phil-
ippines, for example, these are based on relatively new units of civil organization
created by a Presidential decree in 1972. The barangay, and the smaller purok units
below—a grouping of perhaps 40-50 households—were in some ways a revival
of traditional family groupings, originally designed to broaden the base of citizen
participation, to promote sanitary and beautification projects, as well as improving
intergroup relations and links to existing government organizations (Kendall 1976 ).
Now they are also used to discuss levels of local preparation to combat the potential
losses from natural hazards, such as finding more effective ways of protecting areas
and responding when disasters occur.
Apart from the discussion of needs, these committees often lead to reducing risk
by changing behaviours , such as avoiding throwing garbage into local drainage
ditches, or regularly cleaning them, which has obvious results by helping prevent
or reduce local flooding in rainy seasons. The advantage of such organizations is
that they increase participation, spread awareness of the risks and allow people to
contribute in discussions about the type of risk procedures that are needed, rather
than the more traditional top-down approach associated with government actions.
To be effective, these organizations frequently require charismatic leadership to
publicize the need to anticipate problems and to encourage action, as well as be-
ing aware of the need to listen to the local community, whose willingness to help
is increased if they believe that their problems are being taken into account and
not ignored. Studies of fires in communities in Canada ( Kulig et al. 2013 ; Town-