Community Disaster Resilience in the COVID-19 Outbreak: Insights from Shanghai’s Experience in China

Abstract

Purpose

Communities are central to the practice of public health emergency preparedness and response. This article mainly focuses on COVID-19 and discusses the formation and structure of community disaster resilience, which is an effective method for coping with such a public health emergency.

Methods

Based on the management of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, this article uses Shanghai’s experience to illustrate how a community disaster resilience was formed for risk management. Resorting to the analytical framework of risk city, principles of community disaster resilience are given.

Results

Four actions can be recommended based on Shanghai’s experience: 1) Applying a vulnerability analysis matrix for targeted risk governance, 2) empowering volunteer groups for emergency response, 3) policy and action for public health emergency prevention, and 4) risk communication for uncertainty-oriented planning.

Conclusion

Shanghai's experience offers a reference to tackle the COVID-19 at the global level. The COVID-19 outbreak highlights that humans still face various unpredictable health risks in the future. Forming a connection-based resilience at the community level is an effective way to risk management.

Keywords:

• community resilience
• risk management
• collaborative network
• COVID-19

Acknowledgment

We would like to thank the interviewees in the Lujiazui community.

Ethics Statement

Exemption of Ethical Approval: The interview materials are related to public administration instead of medical research. The public administration interviews are not considered research that requires ethical approval, and that informed consent was obtained from all concerned. All liabilities associated with the utilization of interview materials are borne by the authors.

Disclosure

The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work.