Yukiko Takeuchi’s research while affiliated with Kyoto University and other places

This chapter discuss about education sector’s role and management through experience of East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. Education sector’s main role is to provide proper education to the future citizens. Public schools are located in the community, and therefore, community people have certain level of recognition to school in the regular time as well as in the emergency time. It is often considered to be contradicted that if school becomes a shelter, how to continue the education. School as the core vital community infrastructure becomes the shelter for natural reasons. However, how to continue education during the post disaster is also important. Thus, the education in emergency becomes of utmost importance, and the school manual should be modified to reflect these lessons. Locations of the school, its structure, function, layout all become very important for countries like Japan, which has long coast line and relatively less flat areas. Thus, it becomes very important that the E-HFA (Hyogo framework for Action for Education sector) is properly realized and practiced in local governments in the high-risk areas.

Results derived from the Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI)-consisting of five dimensions (economic, institutional, natural, physical, and social), 25 parameters, and 125 variables-reflect the abilities of people and institutions to respond to potential climate-related disasters in Chennai, India. The findings of this assessment, applied in the 10 administrative zones of the city, reveal that communities living in the northern and older parts of Chennai have lower overall resilience as compared to the flourishing areas (vis-à-vis economic growth and population) along the urban fringes. The higher resilience of communities along the urban fringes suggests that urbanisation may not necessarily lead to a deterioration of basic urban services, such as electricity, housing, and water. This indication is confirmed by a strong statistical correlation between physical resilience and population growth in Chennai. The identification of the resilience of different urban areas of Chennai has the potential to support future planning decisions on the city's scheduled expansion.

Being an agrarian region, the northwest part of Bangladesh frequently experiences recurrent droughts over the last decade. To cope with this insidious disaster, the farmers in this region practice various adaptation measures through their own efforts with institutional support. But these efforts and support are not sufficient for farmers to survive droughts. In this light, this study assesses the adaptive capacity of farmers along with institutions to develop suitable drought adaptation policy in the context of this region. The drought adaptive practices developed in this study are mainly adopted from the unique approach called socioeconomic, institutional and physical. Results reveal that establishment of mango orchard, vegetable gardening and community health care service would be helpful in enhancing drought resilience at community level. Moreover, an important policy message from this study suggests that validation of these practices through government offices, research institutes and other relevant organizations can help to develop an appropriate drought adaptation policy for this region. Similarly, by performing these practices from national to local level, farmers as well as communities in this region will be able to effectively sustain their livelihoods against droughts.

As part of Indian Ocean Tsunami recovery projects, an eco-village was established in Lagoswatta, located in the Kalutara district near Colombo in Sri Lanka. There are 55 tsunami affected families relocated from 8 different communities. It was supported by local NGO. UNEP and UN-HABITAT initiated the Eco-housing project in 2004 to build capacity and to increase awareness on this issue. The main environmental activities are as follows: i) classification of garbage by type, ii) composting, iii) using natural energy such as rainwater tank and solar panel, ix) eco-friendly housing design, and x) workshop about environment conducted by local NGO. This case study will show the impacts of thematic resettlement as eco-village through field survey between 2006 and 2012. Questionnaire and interview survey were conducted at all households. Observation survey involved understanding the changing of the community structure and physical life condition in the resettlement area.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the challenges for disaster risk reduction (DRR) by local governments and local implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) as the global DRR guideline. Design/methodology/approach Based on a survey on 20 tasks identified in “A guide for implementing HFA by local stakeholders”, HFA implementation by local government is analyzed to identify priorities and the gaps. The target group for the detail analysis was the Makati city DRR coordinating council (MCDRRCC). Findings The survey reviewed how multi‐stakeholders involved in local DRR perceive these HFA 20 tasks, which revealed trends and gaps within their work. The result showed that Makati currently places more emphasis on HFA 1, but revealed some gaps in the area of HFA 4. While suggesting a set of recommended actions for Makati, the analysis also revealed how these gaps were addressed in its recent action plan. MDRRCC demonstrated a case for local platform for DRR in terms implementing the actions and addressing the challenges through proper coordination among stakeholders. Research limitations/implications Since local HFA implementation is relevantly new area, its applicability needs to be examined further considering linkages between national and local governments. Originality/value This paper is unique since the original data were collected from the survey. Makati city case proposes a model of local platform for comprehensive DRR actions along with HFA, which provides value added approach contributing to the ISDR Campaign. The case of Makati provides an on‐going model process of a local platform for DRR which can be leant by other local government for possible replication.

An exploratory study is conducted to assess the resilience of Infanta through an analysis of its ecosystems from ecological, physical, economic, social and institutional perspectives. Recognizing the strong interdependencies of ecological, physical, economic, social and institutional dimensions in ecosystems and that community-level perceptions can shape adaptation actions, a survey is conducted in 36 village councils in Infanta, Quezon, Philippines utilizing a questionnaire covering 5 dimensions, 25 parameters and 125 measures selected based on the local context of Infanta to gain an understanding of the level of resilience in mountain, riverine, urban, agricultural plain, estuarine and coastal ecosystems. Results show that overall resilience levels of ecosystems lie between 3.08 (medium resilience) and 3.26 (high resilience) on a scale of 1–5. However, resilience scores in the five dimensions vary from 2.57 (low resilience) to 3.51 (high resilience). On the whole, overall resilience levels in the 36 villages exhibit high levels in the social dimension and low levels in the economic dimension. By assessing the resilience of ecosystems as attempted in this study, a baseline is determined where entry points for adaptation actions that are responsive to prevailing ecosystem conditions can be identified, positive and negative factors addressed and gaps and opportunities acted upon to enhance the resilience of Infanta's ecosystems.

The study addresses disaster risks in Delhi through a resilience approach. It utilizes the Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) tool, which assesses disaster resilience from five dimensions: physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural. Each dimension comprises 5 parameters, and each parameter consists of 5 variables. The study is carried out in the nine revenue districts of Delhi and reveals that East Delhi is least resilient and New Delhi is most resilient. The CDRI analysis in East Delhi points out the urgent need to focus on key parameters such as housing and land use, population, intensity and frequency of natural hazards, ecosystem services, and land use in natural terms. On the other hand, New Delhi is the most resilient due to all five dimensions, where most significant parameters responsible for its high resilience are housing and land use, population, income, employment, intensity and frequency of natural hazards, ecosystem services, and land use in natural terms. In addition, the overall results of all nine districts show an inverse relationship between resilience score and population density. For example, districts with higher population density show low resilience and vice versa. Moreover, districts located on hazard-prone areas show low resilience. For example, East Delhi and North East Delhi scored low resilience because they both are situated on the Yamuna flood catchment areas. The study further develops key suggestions that are required to address disaster risk in all nine districts of Delhi and discusses future implications of CDRI to address city’s vulnerability. The approach’s distinctness is reflected through its consideration of micro-level diversities and presents some implications to resilience.

This study was conducted with 718 farmers of owner, owner-cum-tenant and tenant farmers of irrigated and non-irrigated villages at 14 upazila (sub-district) in two severe drought-prone districts of northwestern Bangladesh through a semi-structured questionnaire. It assessed farmer's perception and awareness, impacts and adaptation measures of farmers towards drought. The results revealed that farmers in both areas perceived a changed climate in recent years. They not only identified that drought is the most prevalent disaster in the study area because of rainfall and temperature variation, but also groundwater depletion, lack of canal and river dragging, increased population, deforestation, etc. accelerate drought in this area. As a consequence of drought, agriculture as well as farmers' social life and health are threatened the most. To cope with drought, farmers have been adapting various practices mainly through agronomic management, crop intensification, water resource exploitation, etc. Among different farmer groups in both irrigated and non-irrigated areas, it has been seen that owner farmers have more capacity to adopt new technology than owner-cum-tenant and tenant farmer. In conclusion, this study recommended that interrelationship among different stakeholders, effective early warning system and improved water conservation systems are essential to sustain farmers livelihood in the event of drought.

This article compares the resilience of two communities in Chennai, India, to climate-related disasters. The selected communities have similar exposure to natural hazards (cyclones and river-based floods due to their close proximity to the sea. Both areas are predominantly residential. Results from a household survey, assessing the physical, social and economic resilience of individuals through a Climate-related Disaster Community Resilience Framework (CDCRF), reveal that people living in the vicinity of rivers and canals are at higher risk from impacts (damages on house, diseases) of floods compared to others. However, despite their experience to past flood-related disasters, they have not been able to enhance their coping capacity due to their limited adaptive capacity. Thus, their resilience is limited to absorb, manage and bounce back future climate-related disasters (particularly floods). In collaboration with other stakeholders, mainly the Corporation of Chennai (Municipality), community-driven participatory solutions are concluded to have beneficial effect in enhancing the resilience of communities to climate-related disasters.

Building resilience to disasters is indispensable in cities, like Chennai, India, which are challenged by emerging urban disaster risks caused by impacts of urbanization and higher probability of future disasters due to climate change. In this paper, an action-oriented resilience assessment (AoRA), consisting of 63 actions, divided into 21 parameters and 5 dimensions (physical, social, economic, institutional and natural), is defined which has the objective to enhance the resilience of communities of Chennai to climate-related disasters. On the basis of responses from the selected target group, community leaders (councillors) in the 155 wards, the local government of Chennai is the key stakeholder to implement the proposed actions in the AoRA. However, further findings underpin that a multi-stakeholder approach, involving communities, academia, private organizations and NGOs, is needed to create disaster resilient communities.