Handling Compounded Uncertainty in Spatial Planning and Humanitarian Action in Unexpected Floods in Wayanad, Kerala: Towards a Contextualised Contingency Planning Approach

Community resilience implications for institutional response under uncertainty: Cases of the floods in Wayanad, India and the earthquake in Port‐au‐Prince, Haiti

“…The above events, although vastly different in scale and nature of repercussions, both take place in contexts with ‘weak institutional mechanisms, chronic vulnerabilities and scarce resources’ referred to as developmental contexts (Koshy et al, 2022, p. 5) wherein unprecedented environmental crises are triggered by a combination of natural hazards and human actions. These types of events amplify the challenges for spatial planners (Maynard et al, 2018; Zandvoort et al, 2018), humanitarian actors (ALNAP, 2018; Campbell & Knox Clarke, 2018) and decision makers (Gersonius et al, 2013; Kwakkel et al, 2016) to embrace uncertainty while formulating long‐term planning and disaster risk reduction measures.…”

“…In contrast with narratives that perceive affected communities as helpless and incapable of self‐organization during crises, recent literature has provided evidence that even the most vulnerable communities can be resilient in times of crises and disasters (Carabine & Wilkinson, 2016; Imperiale & Vanclay, 2016) giving rise to long‐term, contextualized planning and humanitarian approaches that favor putting communities and civil society at the center of decision‐making processes towards recovery and transformational development (Imperiale & Vanclay, 2020; Koshy et al, 2022). Twigg and Mosel (2017) for example present how communities in post‐disaster contexts in Nepal, Turkey, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Thailand became proactive first responders through spontaneous and ad hoc initiatives.…”