Community Participation in Disaster Management: In Pursuit of a Framework for Design

Abstract

According to the international INFORM classification, Turkey is listed as a ‘high risk’ country in terms of disasters due to high exposure to natural hazards, risk of conflict and existence of a large vulnerable population consisting of uprooted people. The 1999 İzmit earthquake is considered to be a milestone in disaster awareness in Turkey, since a comprehensive and holistic understanding about increasing the resilience against disasters in line with the global trends began to replace the limited focus on response during and after the disruptive event. A considerable number of current laws and regulations to take risk-reducing measures, including building codes and an extensive disaster preparedness program, were prepared during this period. The Ministry of Interior Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) was founded in 2009 to coordinate the management efforts under one roof. The devastating aftermath of the Kahramanmaraş twin earthquakes in February 2023, however, shows that there is still a long way to go, especially while future disasters are known to be imminent.
In recent approaches to disaster management, multi-stakeholder participation is emphasised instead of purely centralised structures. Management with broad participation, including civil society, local communities at risk and volunteers, are found to be more effective in combating disasters. Instead of top-down, rigid and centralised structures, participatory approach suggests bottom-up and flexible interactions actively formed by decentralised communities. Bottom-up approach allows sharing of responsibilities and promotes a sense of ownership of the problem, and empowers people in cultivating resilient communities with a proactive attitude. ‘Community’ or ‘public’ participation is a widely used term to describe a variety of interested parties taking part in decision making in both pre-disaster and post-disaster activities. Other than a group of individuals living in a given area (i.e. locality), communities can consist of a variety of groups sharing similar interests while being connected to each other via a set of shared attitudes and activities. Therefore, communities can be people at risk, experts and professionals, political groups and even representatives of relevant private sectors.
Despite the recent directions in disaster and emergency management field towards a holistic, cyclical and participatory management perspective, disaster response efforts in the field of design are mostly limited to the emergency response and early recovery phases. Existing trends that are evident in design solutions for disaster response include equipment to support search, rescue and first aid operations, interim solutions for problems raised by damaged infrastructure, and products for temporary accommodation needs following the disruptive event. Taken from the conventional product design perspective, which is modelled in response to the design, production and consumption requirements of the commercial market conditions, these outputs can be regarded as successful designs. However, in order to generate high-impact solutions by supporting various communities in their efforts to participate in effective disaster management activities, it is essential to trade the commercial product design perspective with a systems-level approach. This alternative approach would also cast a different role for the designer than traditional roles, such as form-giving and solving material design problems.
With this challenge in mind, the goal of this work is to investigate the potential of a community-driven, systems-level approach to design that addresses the different stages of the disaster management cycle. The article derives from the literature on disaster and emergency management, social design, social innovation, and sharing and collaborative economy to frame how peer-to-peer, not-for-profit interactions can inspire flexible formation of communities to tackle the risks and impacts of a disaster. It then proposes a design approach that supports community participation in disaster management from this theoretical framework which aims to create collaboration opportunities through design between different stakeholders in disaster relief. This proposed approach is discussed over the student projects carried out in a course in an industrial design department. The framework based on disaster management and sharing economy is discussed in terms of the opportunities and limitations presented for design for community-based disaster management. The framework proved to be successful in planning for exchanges between stakeholders, whereas its potential for community building and empowerment in risk reduction and planning was found to be less promising. Further discussions include designing for stakeholder participation by transcending from product to system design perspective, and the transformation of the traditional role of the designer from technical expert to facilitator which was driven by this perspective change.