Public participation in NGO-oriented communities for disaster prevention and mitigation (N-CDPM) in the Longmen Shan fault area during the Wenchuan and Lushan earthquake periods

ABSTRACT

The Longmen Shan fault area in southwest China is one of the world’s most active earthquake zones. The epicenters of the two most recent earthquakes, the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake (8.0 Ms) and the 2013 Lushan earthquake (7.0 Ms), both of which caused serious losses, were only 85 km apart. Community-based disaster risk reduction is the foundation of the disaster management system pyramid and is critical to the success of ‘sustainable hazard mitigation’. Based on multiple collaborative stakeholder perspectives, this paper examines public participation in an NGO-oriented Community for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (N-CDPM) in the period between the two earthquakes as a multi-stage problem; N-CDPM establishment, normal operations, disaster testing, and continuous improvement. Multi-stage field research was conducted in the affected areas in the Longmen Shan fault area to examine the collaboration in each stage, after which the differences were compared across the four stages based on eight key indices; scales, core stakeholders, core network stability, mean number of lines, mean collaborative level, governments, and individual and public organization participation. The government participation, individual participation, and public organization participation are then discussed. This paper provides a novel research approach to CDPM in multiple earthquake regions and gives rich insights into the collaboration between the government and the public for N-CDPM.

KEYWORDS:

• Community for disaster prevention and mitigation
• Longmen Shan fault area
• Lushan earthquake
• public participation
• Wenchuan earthquake

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Major Bidding Program of National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 17ZDA286], the Major Bidding Program of Ministry of Education of China [grant number 17JHQ005], the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71704124], the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2012017yjsy218], and China Scholarship Council [grant number 201706240168]. We appreciate this support both in finance and in spirit.