Browsing by Author "Dharmadasa, KHK"

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Assessment of community disaster resilience in Sri Lanka: methodological approach in developing an index
(Department of Building Economics, 2024) Dharmadasa, KHK; Kulatunga, U; Thayaparan, M; Keraminiyage, KP; Sandanayake, YG; Waidyasekara, KGAS; Ranadewa, KATO; Chandanie, H
Disasters threaten communities, causing immense damage to life, property, and overall well-being. In recent years, the frequency and impact of disasters have increased, highlighting the urgent need for enhancing Community Disaster Resilience (CDR). CDR refers to a community's ability to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from disasters. This research presents the proposed methodology to develop an index to measure community resilience to disasters in Sri Lanka. Based on the previous studies on resilience, a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted to identify all possible proxy indicators of CDR across economic, social, institutional, physical, environmental, and human health dimensions. The primary data collection and analysis will be conducted using a systematic approach called Q-methodology. As the SLR results generated too many items in the first instance, a pilot study will be undertaken to reduce the number and to identify the most relevant indicators (Q-set) for measuring CDR in Sri Lanka. This Q-set data will be ranked based on how much each expert in the field of disaster management, who will be selected through the snowball technique, would agree with each identified indicator (Q-sort). Then, Q-sort data is subjected to factor analysis to determine the inter-correlation between the results of Q-sorting. The qualitative data gathered during Q-sorting is expected to be analysed using thematic analysis. Finally, the index will be constructed by deriving the weightage of each indicator based on the Q-sorting results. This paper provides an extensive illustration of the above methodology.
item: Conference-Full-text
Review on the importance of capacity building for enhancing disaster resilience through the effective utilisation of resources
(2023-07-21) Dharmadasa, KHK; Kulatunga, U; Thayaparan, M; Keraminiyage, KP
Considering the increase in catastrophic events, resilience is now a widely accepted concept. Building resilience among the physical structures, infrastructure, and communities has become a necessity to improve the capacity to face future disasters. Effective utilisation of resources is one of the possible ways of building capacity within communities with the perception of enhancing resilience to future disasters. Therefore, identifying the correlation between resilience, capacity building, and resource utilisation is highly important to face future calamities. The resources required for enhancing disaster resilience vary depending on the type of disaster and the area affected by the disaster. Hence, resource constraints have been acknowledged as a factor in the ongoing failure of numerous recovery efforts. As such, capacity must be developed by utilising the resources effectively to address the deficiencies in resilience levels. Thus, a narrative literature review was carried out to establish the resource requirement in terms of capacity building to form disaster resilience. As the outcome of this comprehensive review, a conceptual framework was developed to support future decision-making processes with regard to disaster resilience. As per the findings, resource requirements exist in different forms such as infrastructure, institutional, economic, social, and environmental, and addressing them collectively, one after the other will enhance the resilience to future disasters in a considerable manner.