Public Participation in Planning for Community Management of Natural Hazards

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Sarzynski ◽  
Paolo Cavaliere
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Process Design ◽  
Hazard Mitigation ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Support Tools ◽  
Mitigation Planning ◽  
Participation Process

Public participation in environmental management, and more specifically in hazard mitigation planning, has received much attention from scholars and practitioners. A shift in perspective now sees the public as a fundamental player in decision making rather than simply as the final recipient of a policy decision. Including the public in hazard mitigation planning brings widespread benefits. First, communities gain awareness of the risks they live with, and thus, this is an opportunity to empower communities and improve their resilience. Second, supported by a collaborative participation process, emergency managers and planners can achieve the ultimate goal of strong mitigation plans. Although public participation is highly desired as an instrument to improve hazard mitigation planning, appropriate participation techniques are context dependent and some trade-offs exist in the process design (such as between representativeness and consensus building). Designing participation processes requires careful planning and an all-around consideration of the representativeness of stakeholders, timing, objectives, knowledge, and ultimately desired goals to achieve. Assessing participation also requires more consistent methods to facilitate policy learning from diverse experiences. New decision-support tools may be necessary to gain widespread participation from laypersons lacking technical knowledge of hazards and risks.

What Is a Good Public Participation Process? Five Perspectives from the Public

2001 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROB KRUEGER ◽  
SETH TULER ◽  
THOMAS WEBLER
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
The Public ◽  
Participation Process

The Principle of Participation

2019 ◽  
pp. 129-140
Author(s):  
Henk Addink
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Public ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Collective Process ◽  
Participation Process ◽  
Degree Of Participation ◽  
Number Of Individuals

Participation is the active involvement of a group of individuals in a collective process on actual or intended actions of administrative authorities. Participation can refer to taking part in preliminary arrangements, influencing decision-makers, or taking part in actual decision-making processes. But participation can also be justified from the point of view of a sensible government finding out potential flaws and realizing ownership. The term ‘public participation’ presumes that the initiative and procedures are in the hands of citizens, the participation process is generally managed by public entities. The participation principle can be also about participation as a right, and the question of what consequences are there for the direct and guiding function of the administration. Participation is important under the democratic rule of law as well. Public participation can be motivated by democratic, constitutional, corporatist, or administrative motives. While the distinction between these motives for participation is not always unequivocal, these do offer an indication of the various perspectives—and consequently motives—of the parties involved in public participation. With regards to participation, a distinction can be made between the type and the level of participation achieved, ie form and degree of participation. Forms of participation are popular initiatives, the citizen’s panel, the referendum, and the community level forms. The degree of participation is quantified by using indicators, including the number of individuals, the time invested in and the frequency of participation, the involvement of individuals, the extent of influence on the process with respect to the issues addressed by the public authority and the level of participation that citizens are entitled to. Citizens could play different roles, for example one of co-decision-making, co-producing, counselling, consultation, or of distributing information.

Augmented Reality (AR) for Promoting Public Participation in Urban Planning

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Ahmad Johari Awang ◽  
M. Rafee Majid ◽  
Noradila Rusli
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Augmented Reality ◽  
Public Participation ◽  
General Public ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Participation Rate ◽  
Evaluation Process ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
The Public ◽  
Participation Process

Public participation plays a vital role for the developer and local government as this ensures the acceptance of the general public to the proposed project. However, the general public participation rate in the planning process in Malaysia is still at a low level. Hence, this study was conducted to study the use of augmented reality (AR) as a tool in promoting public participation in the planning process. In the study that was conducted, 77 respondents were selected from the general public to evaluate the effectiveness of AR. During this evaluation process, 37 of them were given AR material, and another 40 of them were given classic plan material. By using feedbacks from the public, statistical analysis was done to study the effect of AR and conventional plan material on the willingness for public participation process. The statistical test shows that the participant is more willing to participate in the public participation process when AR material is being used.Keywords: AR, Public Participation, Urban Planning

Storytelling—Plots of resilience, learning, and discovery in emergency management

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 363-371
Author(s):  
Bob Freitag, CFM ◽  
Thad Hicks, PhD, CEM, MEP ◽  
Alessandra Jerolleman, PhD, MPA, CFM ◽  
Wendy Walsh, MA
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Management ◽  
Management Education ◽  
Hazard Mitigation ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Mitigation Strategies ◽  
Kurt Vonnegut ◽  
Pedagogical Tool ◽  
The Public ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
History Of

Almost everyone can relate to the experience of telling a story. This article explores how storytelling is being used to identify risks and create hazard mitigation strategies, as well as how it can promote learning within the field of emergency management. Storytelling is both a pedagogical tool and an invaluable resource for practicing emergency managers. This article illustrates the ways in which the process of telling a story enables participates to talk about stressful concerns, internalize complex concepts, and even have fun. The article explores how storytelling drove the public process leading to the adoption of hazard mitigation plans, and how eight types of stories, as defined by the American humorist Kurt Vonnegut, can strengthen emergency management education. This article also explores how research suggests that storytelling can provide an effective way for both the tellers of story and their listeners to find meaning in events, provide context to what is being taught, transmit emotion along with information, develop a professional identity, build empathy and compassion, and help with remembering events and lessons learned. The authors have a long history of utilizing storytelling and present this article in order to share and explore storytelling as applied to the discipline of emergency management.

Improving the Effectiveness of the Off-Site Response to a Nuclear Emergency by Increasing Public Participation

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weipeng Shu ◽  
Yawei Mao ◽  
Zhi Zeng
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Emergency Response ◽  
Planning Process ◽  
Site Response ◽  
Emergency Plans ◽  
The Public ◽  
Effective Implementation ◽  
Protective Actions ◽  
Emergency Managers ◽  
Nuclear Emergency

To ensure that adequate protective actions are in place for the public, a salient lesson learned from Fukushima is the necessity to improve the effectiveness of the off-site response, namely the effective implementation of protective actions in a nuclear emergency. Among recent research on nuclear emergency, little attention has been paid to public participation, where the disconnect between the public and authorities, and its negative effect on emergency response exist. This study conducted an analytic discussion on the effectiveness of off-site nuclear emergency, from the standpoint of public participation. The two key factors contributing to effective emergency responses in a nuclear emergency were identified to be the feasibility of emergency plans and the adequacy of emergency preparedness (EP), to which the passive role the public has been playing does no good. First, nuclear emergency plans are developed unilaterally by emergency managers and authorities, without the public involved. This government-centric planning process usually fails to meet the actual needs of the residents should a nuclear accident occur, consequently impairing the feasibility of emergency plans. As regards EP, emergency management’s efforts have long been dedicated to maintain the response capabilities of emergency response personnel, while overlooking the EP of the public. In this case, the public will not be well-prepared for an emergency. Corresponding to the deficiencies stated above, possible solutions to improve the overall effectiveness of off-site emergency response were proposed, from the perspective of increasing public participation. First, to make emergency plans feasible and comprehensive, 1) the public can be incorporated in planning process to consider their needs in emergency plans, 2) emergency plans should be periodically assessed and updated accordingly, based on the up-to-date socio-demographic information. Second, to ensure the effective implementation of EP, 1) the public should be educated more on the knowledge of radiation protection and emergency response, in a participatory rather than informational way, 2) More-realistic nuclear exercises, such as evacuation drills of the population-at-risk, could be cautiously carried out, to test whether the public are well-prepared under emergency conditions. Finally, a precondition of broad public participation is that the public have interest in nuclear emergency. To this end, information communication technologies, should be widely utilized in nuclear emergency to generate public interest, by facilitating two-way communication and displaying the emergency-related information in an easy-to-read way. This study indicates that nuclear emergency should not be a process dominated by emergency managers alone, since the public are not only the protected but also the true first responders in nuclear accidents. Wider public participation should be incorporated into the whole process of emergency management, from planning to preparedness, to maximize the effectiveness of the off-site response to a nuclear emergency.

scholarly journals Improving Public Participation Processes for the Floods Directive and Flood Awareness: Evidence from Cyprus

Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 958 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katerina Charalambous ◽  
Adriana Bruggeman ◽  
Elias Giannakis ◽  
Christos Zoumides
Keyword(s):  
Public Participation ◽  
Rainwater Harvesting ◽  
Green Roofs ◽  
Flood Protection ◽  
Public Consultation ◽  
Protection Measures ◽  
The Public ◽  
Participation Process ◽  
Public Consultations ◽  
Floods Directive

Public participation is integrated in the European Floods Directive to ensure engagement of societal actors in selecting and accepting measures. This study assesses the Directive’s public participation process and provides recommendations for its improvement by using Cyprus as a case study. Interviews with the organizers and attendees of the public consultations were carried out to evaluate the process while a citizen survey examined people’s flood awareness and opinions of three household-level flood protection measures (permeable pavements, rainwater harvesting systems, and green roofs). Public consultation organizers were generally satisfied with the process while participants suggested better structured information and a more participatory approach. The majority (77%) of the survey respondents did not know if they lived in a designated flood risk area while 93% were unaware of the public consultations carried out for the Floods Directive. Their perception about the effectiveness of the three flood protection measures was positively associated with their willingness to implement them. The results indicated the need for more participatory methods in the public participation process and better strategies to increase awareness and the engagement of people in flood management. Establishing procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of public participation could contribute to the recognition and improvement of the process.

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