The importance of institutional and community resilience in post-disaster reconstruction - Rebuilding After Disasters: From Emergency to Sustainability - page 234

disaster because members of this sort of society have chosen to build in such
locations.
Socio-economic factors that affect people's exposure to hazards can
manifest themselves differently in low-income nations, with key factors being
related to poverty (low access to assets), marginalisation (poor access to pub-
lic facilities) and powerlessness (low access to political and social networks). 3
These factors have an influence on the choices that people have regarding
where they can live; for instance, landless squatters live on the flood plain of
the Buriganga River in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and informal slums ( favelas ) are
situated on the steep landslide-prone hills of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. These
factors also influence the levels to which people can provide themselves with
adequate shelter for protection from local conditions; therefore geographic
proximity and exposure to hazards will affect levels of individual and
social resilience. 26 Consequently, unlike the case of higher-income nations
where many people choose to live in areas that are exposed to hazards, in
low-income countries it is more the case of a 'lack of choice' that forces
people to live in areas that are exposed to hazards. 4
After disastrous events, residents often feel that their only choice is to
rebuild their houses with unreinforced methods, thus leaving their new
homes just as vulnerable as those that were originally damaged or destroyed.
Petal, et al. have noted that this might be because hazard-resistant designs
are perceived to be too expensive, to rely on materials that are not available
through the local market or to demand a level of construction skill that
has not been developed within the local population. 20 Thus there should
be a form of construction based on hazard-resistant building design that
is specifically aimed at benefiting the poor. For example, Jigyasu describes
an increase in the vulnerability of local communities after the Latur 1993
earthquake in India, where sustainable recovery interventions were poorly
planned and implemented. 12 Therefore, it is argued here and in a number of
other chapters in this topic that a 'community-based' imperative is needed in
which construction and design professionals learn to share their knowledge
with, and at the same time learn from, the users of the structures. This knowl-
edge exchange would yield a bottom-up demand for safe construction and
voluntary compliance with standards, and there would be public, government
and private-sector expectation and support for enforcement. 20
A case from South India
Andhra Pradesh is the third largest state in India, covering 275,000 km², and
bordering the Bay of Bengal. It is also one of the world's most cyclone-prone
regions. Historically, tropical cyclones have been the cause of large-scale
losses of human life, livestock, crops, property and infrastructure in Andhra
Pradesh, with serious adverse effects on the local and regional economies.
Despite the threat that cyclones and floods pose to the livelihoods and lives of
millions of people, many inhabitants remain in the area through poverty and