The lessons from past earthquakes have highlighted the importance of constructing community evacuation systems. This paper reviewed previous studies on promoting safer community evacuation systems and found they are mostly on rational top-down evacuation systems or promoting resident participation but they failed to provide bottom-up approaches to constructing community evacuation systems by involving residents who have specific knowledge of the local vulnerability and capacity. Therefore, using case communities in Kyoto, Japan, this study suggested and verified a practical community evacuation planning (CEP) model for the construction, assessment, and supplementation of community evacuation systems by residents with local knowledge who are the first responders to disaster. JEL classification: D78, D81, D85, L38, O21
This study explores the importance of indigenous knowledge for everyday practices of disaster risk reduction and response. Many existing studies have highlighted the need to integrate such knowledge with modern science. Based on ethnographic research in indigenous communities in the Mentawai Islands of Indonesia, this study explores the categorization of indigenous knowledge in the integration process. To that end, primary data were collected through in-depth interviews while secondary data were collected from relevant documents, including books, articles, websites and government and NGO reports. The findings indicate that indigenous knowledge is acquired through long observation and interaction with disasters. Although some of this knowledge is based on successes in other localities, some indigenous knowledge is completely local, homogenous and shared among community members. It was also established that indigenous knowledge can be meaningfully organized into a number of categories, and that indigenous knowledge of a technical nature is more likely to be integrated with scientific knowledge. The research was exploratory and approached indigenous knowledge issues from the point of view of indigenous communities themselves. This approach should be replicated and expanded in other indigenous communities.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.