How a risk focus in emergency management can restrict community resilience-a case study from Victoria, Australia

Abstract

The research investigated understandings of risk and resilience in emergency management (EM) policy and practice. The core findings illustrate how a complex of institutionalised socio-cultural expectations and standardised processes-that is, evidence-based response models to deal with and communicate uncertainty-influence the operationalisation of resilience in EM. We observe that a focus on disaster risk as a quantifiable product of physical hazards is an attempt to control uncertainty and leads to engineered or technology-centred response solutions. Accordingly, community resilience is principally seen as the product of risk reduction, incident response and recovery interventions. The rese..