Collaborative Decision-Making for Community Disaster Resilience: Development of a Framework Prototype and its Case Study Application in Auroville, India

Bohatschek, Philipp (2020) Collaborative Decision-Making for Community Disaster Resilience: Development of a Framework Prototype and its Case Study Application in Auroville, India. Masters thesis, Vienna University of Economics and Business.

Text 2020_08 Master Thesis Philipp Bohatschek.pdf Restricted to Registered users only Download (1MB)

Abstract

Generating community disaster resilience has become a major focus for disaster risk reduction research and practice. Previous research indicates the importance of local participatory governance capacity for achieving community disaster resilience.To date,scholarly work mostly focusses on collaborative tools and methods but does not provide ways to assess central characteristics of and conditions for collaborative decision-making processes per se.This thesis focusses on understanding and assessing collaborative decision-making (CDM) as one form of participatory governance, which is under-researched in the field of disaster risk reduction.This research thereby aims to contribute to filling the gap of evaluating local participatory disaster risk governance processes for community disaster resilience. Building on a review of the literature, the author of this thesis develops a collaborative decision-making framework to assess central characteristics of and conditions for CDM processes. The framework prototype serves as a basis to evaluate participatory governance processes on their degree of CDM in a standardised manner.With the aim to support local stakeholders’ efforts in strengthening community disaster resilience, the thesis further applies the CDM framework prototype in a case study on the autonomous township Auroville, India. The author takes an action research approach to investigate the role of collaborative decision-making as part of local disaster risk governance processes through key informant interviews and analysis of secondary source data.The case study further tests the applicability of the CDM framework prototype and assesses community disaster resilience for water-related disaster risk, taking a subjective resilience measurement approach.To capture the various dimensions and drivers of local disaster risks, the thesis presents a causal loop diagram from a socio-ecological system perspective. The results of the case show that the CDM framework prototype is of practical use for evaluating participatory decision-making. A novel citizens’ initiative, the Citizens’ Assembly, constitutes a promising attempt to overcome existing deficits and strives to develop a sustainable water vision in a collaborative decision-making process.Contributing to substantial participatory disaster risk governance is of particular importance in Auroville’s context of no enforcementof rules and a prerequisite for further community disaster resilience development. Future case study applications of the developed CDM framework prototype in other communities could consider case-specific weighting of CDM characteristics to help prioritise interventions in participatory disaster risk governance.In a further step, this might also lay the foundation for the integration of the CDM framework prototype into community disaster resilience measurements to better understand the role of participatory disaster risk governance for community disaster resilience.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Subjects:	Collective Organisation > Collective Organisation (General) Water > Water (General)
Depositing User:	Admin User
Date Deposited:	13 Sep 2020 09:56
Last Modified:	13 Sep 2020 09:56
URI:	http://aurorepo.in/id/eprint/86

Actions (login required)

View Item