SIA and DRA integration for increased resilience

ABSTRACT

Environmental change holds many social risks, exposing vulnerable communities and influencing community resilience. Social Impact Assessment (SIA) and Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) both address social risks and impacts following from social changes induced by developments and disasters, aiming to ensure increased and sustainable community resilience. Although similar in purpose, SIA and DRA are rarely intentionally integrated, and while published research is sparse, it does suggest that their integration is an emerging trend. Therefore, as a step to investigate integration, and acknowledging the importance of theoretical underpinnings, this paper investigates the integration of SIA and DRA for increased community resilience. The investigation reveals three distinct areas of potential integration i.e. focus (people centred for sustainable development), approach (pro-active, multi-stakeholder and transdisciplinary), and regulation (mandated under legislative requirements). These findings suggest that both SIA and DRA can benefit significantly from integration, and thereby contribute to increased resilience and improving the social well-being for communities at risk.

KEYWORDS:

• Social impact assessment (SIA)
• disaster risk assessment (DRA)
• resilience
• integration
• sustainable development

Acknowledgments

The valuable suggestions and comments of anonymous reviewers are gratefully acknowledged.

Notes

1. In this paper, integration is understood in a broad sense, ranging from a single process to meaningful coordination.