The project is a component of a bigger program entitled “Empowering Vulnerable Communities Through Risk Communication in Disaster Risk Management (RiskCom4DRM). On the whole, the program aims to capacitate affected communities in designing, implementing, and monitoring and evaluating strategic risk communication (riskcom) plan and integrate such in their bigger local disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) plans. Through this risk communication (riskcom) intervention, it is envisioned that the selected local communities will be better able to effectively manage the disaster risks confronting them.
RiskCom4DRM will be undertaken to enable vulnerable communities to get organized for quick response and to avoid being exposed to risks by:
This project tackles the first sequential step in RiskCom4DRM program. It deals with the baseline or situational analysis. It seeks to draw up the situation in the selected communities by identifying and analyzing the following aspects: key DRM issues, affected stakeholders, existing policies and programs on DRM, organizations doing work on DRM, communication resources, and communication needs to be addressed by RiskCom4DRM. Data gathering techniques will make use of participatory rapid communication appraisal methods (PRCA) such as problem tree, social mapping, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. A preliminary analysis of the situation based on secondary data shall set the focus for the field PRCA.
The value added of this participatory approach is that it leads community members to: (a) jointly discuss the issue that the riskcom initiative intends to address; (b) brainstorm and agree on who would be affected by the riskcom initiative; (c) have an influence over the riskcom process and an interest in its successful implementation; (d) focus on people and groups with “concrete” stake; and (e) cluster and prioritize those with higher levels of interest and influence over the issue (FAO, 2014). Furthermore, PRCA in riskcom involves the centrality of listening to project stakeholders’ voices (FAO, 2014: 44). From this, their real needs, understanding of, perceptions and assumptions regarding risk or DRRM in general can be threshed out and clarified on a deeper level. This also provides a sense of ownership of the riskcom process and protocol to be developed.
Literature review would attest that many studies on baseline assessment skip the communication data while focusing heavily on socio-demographics, economic and technical aspects. As such, there are rarely baseline data available for communication planning. This results to having arbitrary (and not strategic) communication plans based on guts and feel and not really on actual evidences gathered on the ground.
The results of this project will serve as the empirical basis for the next step and the project entitled “Design, Management, and Implementation of Community-Based Riskcom in Disaster Risk Management.” This will help form the strategic riskcom plan that depicts the essential communication elements and approaches meant to bring about desired behavioral changes among the various stakeholders in terms of sound disaster risk management.
Disaster risk management (DRM) is an information- and knowledge-intensive endeavor. People can only “learn better, do better” when they have relevant information and knowledge to base their practices on. To a large extent, human behavior is driven by what people know and understand. Thus, the need for a communication intervention that would facilitate learning and knowledge sharing among the stakeholders on DRM.
This project proposal is related to a similar project undertaken by the proponent for climate resilience among coastal communities in Bangladesh. Entitled “Rural Radio Initiatives for Coastal Climate Resilient Infrastructure Project (RRI-CCRIP), this also involved the conduct of intensive situational analysis the results of which were used for developing and implementing a local Strategic Communication for Development (Comdev) Plan that addresses climate resilience among poor coastal communities. Given the context in this area, rural or community radio was chosen as the hub of all the communication efforts in the communities.
Through this new initiative in the Philippine setting, the proponent aims to find out how the distinct features of riskcom, as the communication approach and framework, as well as its accompanying elements (source, messages, channel) can push and pull the DRM efforts at the local community level.
The Philippines is constantly being exposed to natural hazards due to its climate system and location in the Pacific Ring of Fire. Through the years, the country has seen these hazards become disasters of increasing impact. The geophysical characteristics of the country merged with the socio-economic and cultural contexts have mostly caused hazards to turn into disasters.
There has been a recent influx of studies on risk assessment for risk reduction mostly in the fields of environmental science, engineering, agriculture and forestry (Licuanan et al., 2015; Asare-Kyei et al., 2014; Cadag, J. and Gaillard, JC., 2012; Barquet, K. and Cumiskey, L., 2018). Many vulnerable areas have been studied and many risk assessment maps have been developed. However, there have been limited studies done on risk communication. The participatory nature of risk communication for DRRM aims to establish a context-specific, people-focused approach to risk reduction and management.