Innovation in Disaster Risk Management: Barriers and Success Factors in Adopting Participatory Decision-Support Tools

Natural and man-made disasters have become a major threat to urban areas. The increasing intensity and recurrence of disasters is overwhelming Disaster Risk Management (DRM) efforts unravelling crucial implementation gaps and structural inequalities. This raises a question of how to innovate and transform DRM systems in support of urban resilience.

The literature highlights enhancing lateral and vertical coordination in risk governance as the key to overcoming DRM shortages. Participatory decision-support tools have the potential to accomplish this goal. These tools offer a space for different stakeholders to collaborate in risk assessment, goal setting, and planning. However, existing governance frameworks rarely exhibit the flexibility to integrate such tools in DRR planning, and very little research explores the process and the barriers of adoption of such tools.

This research follows a multiple cases study approach to investigate the barriers and enablers of the adoption of a participatory disaster vulnerability triage tool. This scenario-based vulnerability triage tool helps emergency response planners identify and prioritise the communities in vulnerable situations that most likely need support before, during and after a hazardous event. We investigate the adoption of this vulnerability triage tool by risk managers in two European cities: Tartu, Estonia and Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Feedback sessions on the use of the tool and interview with experts were conducted to understand the contribution of the tool and barriers of its adoption.

Our results show that participatory vulnerability triage tool can enhance the alignment of disaster support needs and response efforts. Experts indicated that such tools need to be more adaptive and have different levels of complexity to permit vertical coordination and inclusion of communities. Despite the acceptance of participatory decision-support tools by different stakeholders, resistance to change in ingrained risk analysis frameworks and practices are the key impediment of the wider adoption of such tools.