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The Centre for Disaster Resilience's (CDR) research is leading to a reduction in the vulnerability of communities world-wide to the threat posed by hazards of natural and human origin, demonstrating the following impact;
The Disaster and Development Network (DDN) researches and facilitates the implementation of disaster risk reduction strategies to improve community resilience in the poorest communities of Southern Africa and South Asia. The DDN aims to initiate life-saving health policies and disaster risk reduction strategies through local engagement and policy intervention. This Case Study focuses on the way interventions based on DDN research have been implemented at local level, exemplified through community resilience-building in Bangladesh, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan and Zimbabwe. DDN research has impacted the United Nations Hyogo Framework for Action, the latest international strategy for disaster reduction.
The research undertaken on the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic as a major natural, environmental and human disaster in the UK has changed the approach to managing such catastrophic events. By exploring a full range of interrelated political, technological and socio- cultural contexts of such events, it refocused and refined policy understanding and approach to managing similar disasters at both national and international level, by raising the profile of accounting for the personal, psychological and community impacts as well as the practical implications of such events.
People's welfare, particularly in poorer countries, is undermined by both social vulnerability (linked to poverty, age or lack of education) and environmental hazards (both natural and the consequences of business activity). These factors are typically treated as separate policy agendas, yet in practice often negatively reinforce each other to create so-called `risk hotspots'. Research carried out by members of Cardiff Business School (CBS), created an innovative conceptual framework and a methodology to help businesses, policy-makers and communities to identify hotspots and generate well-informed management strategies to deal with underlying risk factors. Through interdisciplinary, collaborative research, the method has been developed and applied in four countries, demonstrably aiding governments in their planning and decision making to protect vulnerable populations, for example, by enabling targeted improvements of vital infrastructure.
Over 5.5 million people in England and Wales live with flood risk. Research conducted at the University of Surrey illustrates for the first time how exposure to, and experience of, this risk is unequally distributed in the population, often varying along existing lines of social inequality and vulnerability.
The findings of this research have had significant impacts on national strategy and policy.
Surrey's research has been used to change the Environment Agency's flood warning codes and messages throughout the UK, as well as to inform the next Flood Incident Management Investment Strategy. Furthermore, the research has been drawn on by Collingwood Environmental Planning in developing an evidence base for the UK Climate Change Risk Assessment for Defra.
Since the Bradford Riots in 2001, research at Bradford has helped to defuse underlying tensions between deprived, multiethnic communities and between them and the local state thus strengthening community resilience in the city. Building on global research, particularly in Latin America, we have introduced participatory and peace-building methodologies into the locality, but with implications beyond it. The Programme for a Peaceful City enhances our impact through academic-practitioner reflection spaces. Our research with rather than on communities fosters their voice in policy, contributing to a non-confrontational response to the EDL in 2010, 2012 and 2013 and bringing community activists from Bradford's diverse communities together to co-create the ESRC-funded Community University (Comm-Uni-ty) in May 2013.