By Queal King, Undergraduate Research Assistant, Dept. of Government, University of Essex
The task seemed simple – collect as many Resilience Action Plans (RAPs) as possible at a cross-national level. We first agreed that our database would provide information such as the country of origin, the type of coverage (e.g. national, municipal), plan publication date, and an authority or organisation responsible for preparing the plan. We then started our search for RAPs on various online platforms such as Prevention Web and governments’ websites. We found that some documents are more relevant than others for our data collection and so we needed to establish clear coding rules and a list of resources needed to complete our database. This process was an excellent learning opportunity!
Throughout this process we often asked ourselves one question – how will our efforts contribute to the current research on resilience? Currently, there is no database that we are aware of, that could help us understand the nuances and commonalities of RAPs on the cross-national level. Our database could help academics and communities to better understand RAPs procedures. Our aim is to use our knowledge and research to advocate disaster prevention, promote resilience in communities in the event of a disaster and protect vulnerable groups when disaster strikes.
The next section will discuss the concept of resilience and the context dependency of defining resilience when applied to disaster management.