Scholarly Communication Theories for Building Effective Disaster-Resilient Infrastructure: A Study

Introduction

Disaster continues to puzzle researchers as the size of the threats in totality seems to be larger than the infrastructure provided and accurate quantification of disaster before it strikes is always needed but sadly lacking or misleading. This is true as many researchers observed that, despite enormous advancements in science and technology, Smart Cities experience a plethora of hazards due to their overreliance on interconnected systems and networks rendering them susceptible to risks than their counterparts. This calls for effective use of technological innovations (Samarakkody et al., 2023). That is why, in coming decades, urban development policy will be critical calling for climate forecasting and modelling to enhance policies through incorporating determinants to reduce vulnerability and develop robust infrastructure capable of withstanding future occurrences (Berawi, 2018). This is because, disaster resides within objective and subjective worlds, which means that, for it to attract the attention of scholars; it requires interdisciplinary perspectives for understanding its epistemology, ontology, and methodology. This is true, as interaction between man and natural world makes disaster management an interdisciplinary endeavor of “science and social science with planners stuck in the past and having subjective perceptions about the future” (Isser, 2022, p. 1). This raises concern as there is notion that, “the unnaturalness of natural disaster” led to its description as an “outcome of trends in the location of people and assets, and economic, environmental and land use policies, rather than a series of exogenous and unpredictable misfortunes”. This challenges international organizations to devise a sustainably fit-for-all framework “to tackle this growing risk, largely because it is a systemic problem outside of their institutional reach” (Keating et al., 2017, p. 66), which implies the need for resilience.

That is why resilience is rapidly becoming one of the most frequently used concepts in disaster-related literature where disaster-resilience has received definitions “at the individual, building, community, and systems levels through capacities or capabilities and as an outcome or a process” (Barnes, 2021, p. xvi). In this way, Barnes, (2021, p. xvi) was able to link social identity theory with community disaster-resilience since social psychology studies the dynamics of interactions between members of a community “including motivation, lending, assistance, communication, faith in other people, leadership”, etc. Such kinds of attempts emanated from the recognition that, the spike of disasters increases drastically taking huge toll both in human lives and economic cost making regions with high population vulnerable requiring businesses and communities to embrace systematic approach to risk management (Beekharry & Baroudi, 2015). This implies that, there is a dynamic relationship between disaster and development, whose impact largely depends on socio-cultural landscapes of communities affected and managerial capacities of disaster and development of leaders in those areas (Kapucu & Liou, 2014). Prior to this dynamic relationship, there was artificial dissimilarity in literature between disaster and economic development researchers necessitating a shift from “perfecting response and recovery” to focusing on “the benefits of disaster development in the early stages of mitigation and preparedness” (Kapucu & Liou, 2014, p. 2).