LC 00330

What is community resilience?

Community resilience is both a function of the collection of individuals who comprise it and emergent properties that are dependent on social capital, social/cultural values, and practices, including duties to family members, the role of authorities within the community, trust, level of engagement and ethical norms (Etkin, 2016).

Community resilience and FRAMES

11 pilots in FRAMES involve and empower community groups in flood risk management actions:

• Involving community groups (citizens, farmers, businesses, schools, state agents) in flood resilience measures: Medway, Lustrum Beck, Southwell, Kent, Butt Green Shield, Ninove, Geraardsbergen, Denderleeuw, Sloe area, Alblasserwaard, and Wesermarsch.
• Empowering communities to take action for local flood resilience measures: Medway, Lustrum Beck, Southwell, Kent, Butt Green Shield, and Ninove.

How is community resilience linked to the layers of MLS?

The community resilience pilots benefits the other layers of the MLS approach:

• Layer 2, spatial adaptation: improve the zoning of flood prone areas implementing water storage measures at household level (natural flood management, water butts, raised flower beds, flood barriers in front of the door)
• Layer 3, emergency management: raising flood risk awareness leads to capacity building among farmers/landowners for flood preparedness.
• Layer 4, resilient recovery: when flood preparedness measures are taken, community resilience is enhanced which in turn improves flood recovery. 

Lessons learnt

For a full list of the main lessons learnt from the pilots working on community resilience, please click here.

Relevant adaptive capacities

To accomplish actions successfully, certain capacities are more needed than others. More specifically: the combination of flood risk management strategies in response to climate change depends on the adaptation space and capacity of institutions (Berkhout, Hertin and Gann, 2006). Since institutions have the ability to stimulate the capacity of  a society to adapt to climate change from the local to the national level (Gupta et al., 2010), stakeholders and organizations involved in FRAMES focused on the development of adaptive capacities at local and regional level.

The adaptive capacities that were employed and developed during the pilot projects working on community resilience are shown in the spiderweb below. We will provide more detail for those capacities that significantly increased during the pilots.

Bestand:Resilient communities web.jpg

• Diversity of solutions: think outside the box. Community groups in these pilots implemented a variety of solutions at different scales to increase their flood resilience: from NFM interventions such as pond to and water storage devices such as water butts and raised flower beds.
• Act according to plan: prepare plans and stick to them. In Germany (Wesermarsch) flood preparedness manuals were developed for farmers to increase their self-capacity to deal with floods.
• Human resources and accountability: increasing community resilience is a participatory process and requires takes time, energy and switching from a single to a shared responsibility.
• Collaborative leadership: increasing community resilience means involving multiple actors, such as representatives from the spatial planning and water management. The actors need to have an open mind and share their own interests and perspectives about a certain problem. This could lead to  higher commitment and engagement between authorities and citizens.
• Capacity to improvise: the more you know, the more you can do. Empowering local communities will provide them with the capacity to prepare for flood events and know what to do after a flood event.
• Trust: relationships cannot work without mutual trust. The way of approaching local communities and the message communicated to them is key in building relationships and gaining trust. It is important to communicate the message in a clear way to the stakeholders in order to get their interest and engage with them. Once there is trust, stakeholders are more open to discuss and engage in the project.
• Communication and information: continuous and personal communication will strengthen all that is mentioned above. Ask all involved or affected about their individual needs, and clearly explain their role in FRM.  Community resilience starts with changing the perspective of citizens towards flood risk and make them feel they have a role to play. Changing the narrative around flood risk to a message like “Everyone has a role in managing water. What’s yours?’’ In this way, local communities will change their perception and awareness about flood risk, their role and over time they can develop abilities to take the lead to improved flood preparedness and response at local level. E.g. in Belgium the East Flanders government is also developing a participatory procedure to involve more local communities (schools, local neighbourhoods organizations) together with other parties (water management agencies, local municipalities) in FRM.
• Single loop learning: FRAMES outcomes show that that where flood preparedness and response are low, community based approaches improves the resilience of communities towards floods (2.2 Single loop learning).
• Double loop learning: integrate new knowledge into local policies. Integration will ensure long term flood resilience. In Kent for instance, the knowledge generated about the vulnerability of health and social care homes was integrated into the actions plans at District level.

What tools were used in the community resilience pilots?

There are many tools that can be used to increase community resilience. The FRAMES pilots have selected and successfully used the tools listed in the table below. More information can be found by clicking on the links provided, or by visiting the description of the pilots.

We also uploaded a full list of all tools used to improve the management of MLS.

Name of tool	Main objective	Description
Workshops	Collect data from main stakeholders in the area	Workshop for and  with the main stakeholders of the area are organized. Each stakeholder provides information/ knowledge based on their expertise responsibility in flood risk management: crisis management, water management, technical knowledge (flood scenarios) and so on.
Stakeholder analysis	Identify all stakeholders in the area	A stakeholder analysis will identify all actors along with their interests and potential issues who will have a role in MLS before engaging them in the process.
Surveys	Collect data regarding perceptions and awareness of stakeholders	Surveys collect data about the perceptions and level of awareness of inhabitants, stakeholders, policy makers and organisations about (perceived) flood risk, flood preparedness and flood recovery.
Interviews with stakeholders	Collect data from stakeholders in the area	Interviewing stakeholders can result in more specific insights on their knowledge, perceptions, views and opinions on specific flood risk measures.

Research by design approach	Collect data with emphasis on participation from the community	This approach  aims at uniting flood-prone citizens, private stakeholders and local/supra-local public actors in roundtables in order to find cross-sectoral solutions to common challenges.
Community based approach / participation approach	Collect data with emphasis on participation from the community	Approach to include those (potentially) affected as key partners in developing strategies related to their assistance and protection.
Vision and Action Plan	Use when developing adaptive plans for the future	Vision and action plans can be developed to climate/flood proof the area/region with specific spatial adaptation measures.

Referenties

• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-006-9089-3, Berkhout, Hertin and Gann,, 1 januari 2006.
• Guide to dynamic planning Assens Vejle, Danish Coastal Authority, Danish Coastal Authority, 30 mei 2020.
• Medway Flood Action Plan, Environment Agency, 1 november 2017.
• Hazard, Vulnerability, and Resilience, Etkin, D., 1 januari 2016.
• FRAMES excursion Wesermarsch, FRAMES, 1 januari 2019.
• Stakeholder analysis report FRAMES, FRAMES Consortium, 1 januari 2020.
• Adaptive capacities FRAMES definitions and examples, Gupta et al, 20 april 2020.
• The Adaptive Capacity Wheel: A method to assess the inherent characteristics of institutions to enable the adaptive capacity of society, Gupta et al., 1 januari 2010.
• Patel et al., 2017, Patel, 1 januari 2017.

Hier wordt aan gewerkt of naar verwezen door: Layer 3- Preparedness and response