The importance of institutional and community resilience in post-disaster reconstruction - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 233

modern forms of construction, perceived as 'development' and 'progress',
have undercut the value of traditional apprenticeships, degraded tradi-
tional construction and demanded technical knowledge and skills that
builders have not yet acquired. The lack of formal educational opportu-
nities combined with high illiteracy make it challenging to communicate
knowledge and techniques. (page 194) 20
In recent years, advances have been made to embed physical resilience into
long-term developments; for instance, nations such as Peru, Turkey and, to a
certain extent, India have developed guidelines to mitigate for some hazards,
such as the earthquake-resistant design of adobe or non-engineered construc-
tion. Such initiatives are important, but it should be noted that in studies of
risk perception, Asgary and Willis have found that 'safety measures enforced
without considering people's preferences fail to be adequately adopted in
practice' (page 613). 2 In the same way, a close examination of economic
and social realities in less economically developed countries is critical to
understanding the continued construction of highly vulnerable built assets
in the face of natural hazards. 4,10
It might be thought that communities would give careful consideration to
location before starting to build, particularly avoiding known seismic areas
or sites that are subject to, or can be affected by, other hazards such as floods
and landslides. However, for many people in developing countries, there is
no choice about where they live - the benefits of a location outweigh the
costs. People grow accustomed to a low-probability risk and they accept it;
the hazard is perceived as being unavoidable or an 'act of God' and natural
hazards are familiar aspects of everyday life. 26
As explained in Chapter 1, people have different capacities to avoid
or cope with disasters; in other words, they have differing vulnerability .
Vulnerability is 'the characteristics of a person or group and their situation
that influence their capacity to anticipate, cope with and recover from the
impact of a natural disaster' (page 11). 26 People's vulnerability is generated
by social, economic and political processes that influence how hazards af-
fect people in varying ways and with different intensities. 26 Therefore, the
outcome of a disaster is shaped both by the physical nature of the hazard
and the vulnerability of people who are involved (e.g. why people live in
dangerous locations and unprotected buildings and the lack of disaster
preparedness at particular places at particular times). The human influences
upon the causes of disasters are too often overlooked because sometimes
these influences can be discrete and driven by very different socio-economic
factors. For example, in many high-income countries, people like to live near
rivers (and are prepared to pay for the benefit in many cases) for the aesthetic
and recreational benefits that rivers can offer. Therefore, a flood event that
occurs in the non-tidal stretch of the Thames in southern England, for
example, inundating people's homes, businesses and lifelines, will typically
be referred to as a 'natural disaster', but the flood event manifests itself as a