Benchmarking Community Disaster Resilience in Nepal

Abstract

Building disaster resilience is a stated goal of disaster risk reduction programs. Recent research emphasizes a need for a greater understanding of community disaster response and recovery capacity so that communities can absorb shocks and withstand severe conditions and progress through the recovery period more efficiently. Nepal, which is prone to a multitude of hazards and having recently experienced a large earthquake in 2015, provides a unique opportunity for exploring disaster resilience in the developing world context. To date, no study investigating community disaster resilience across the entire country of Nepal exists. This study quantifies disaster resilience at Nepal’s village level, primarily using census data. Guided by the Disaster Resilience of Place (DROP) model, 22 variables were selected as indicators of social, economic, community, infrastructure, and environmental resilience. Community resilience was assessed for 3971 village development communities (VDCs) and municipalities while using a principal component analysis. Additionally, a cluster analysis was performed to distinguish spatial patterns of resilience. Analyses reveal differential community disaster resilience across the country. Communities in the capital city Kathmandu and in the western and far western Hill are relatively resilient. While the entire Tarai region, which holds the greatest proportion of Nepal’s population, exhibits relatively low levels of resilience when compared to the rest of the county. The results from this analysis provide empirical evidence with the potential to help decision-makers in the allocation of scarce resources to increase resilience at the local level.

Spatio-temporal patterns of malaria in Nepal from 2005 to 2018: a country progressing towards malaria elimination

“…The Tarai is the most densely populated region in Nepal and also shares a porous 1770 km border with northern India, which is also a malariaendemic region (38). Nepal adopted a new constitution and a new federal governance model in 2015 (39). It is now administratively divided into seven provinces, 77 districts, and 753 Palikas (including six metropolitan cities, 11 sub-metropolitan cities, 276 municipalities, and 460 rural municipalities) (39).…”

“…Nepal adopted a new constitution and a new federal governance model in 2015 (39). It is now administratively divided into seven provinces, 77 districts, and 753 Palikas (including six metropolitan cities, 11 sub-metropolitan cities, 276 municipalities, and 460 rural municipalities) (39). Before 2015, Nepal was administratively divided into ve development regions, 14 zones, 75 districts, 53 municipalities, and 3,918 village development committees (VDCs) (40).…”

Private companies and community collaboration: Towards building disaster resilience in Diepsloot, Johannesburg, South Africa

“…Since its inception in physics and material science (see Gößling-Reisemann, Hellige & Thier 2018 ), the meaning of the concept of resilience has continued to evolve and has gained prominence across many disciplines. Consequently, the concept is vastly contested (Berkes & Ross 2013 ) and does not have an internationally agreed-upon definition (Aksha & Emrich 2020 ). Despite its conceptual ambiguity, it is a valuable concept, and it has the potential to offer a more systematic and cross-cutting approach to DRR, climate change adaptation and the humanitarian sector (Aksha & Emrich 2020 ).…”

Evaluation of Community Resilience in Rural China—Taking Licheng Subdistrict, Guangzhou as an Example

“…In related research, the large-scale rapid outbreak of interference factors, such as the Sichuan earthquake in 2008, can serve to arouse the research interest of researchers and, consequently, the associated literature also appears in this stage [28][29][30]. However, in recent years, for the rapid and accidental external shock events, there has emerged an active interest in the adaptation and cultivation of the concept of resilience.…”