BUILDING DISASTER RESILIENCE AMID A PANDEMIC The test of human resilience and intellect comes from experiential learning to solve problems with new perspectives. The current coronavirus pandemic is nothing but a learning opportunity for all of mankind. This scenario has given us a great opportunity to re-think the way in which our communities are structured and how education degrees such as a Bachelors In Urban Planning can build our curriculum to better handle situations of extreme stress and disaster. Disasters come in many shapes and forms, and this is not the first time we have been struck by a worldwide crisis. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake brought panic and confusion, uncontrolled fires, overwhelmed transportation and medical services, loss of utilities leading to communications failures and water shortages, severe thirst and hunger, homelessness and inadequate shelter, and reports of lawlessness along with it. Hence, every calamity forces us to open our eyes and look into topical issues that plague us as humans every day. Also, in the last 100 years, two catastrophic hurricanes, Katrina and Rita, caused heavy loss of infrastructure. Add on top of that, societal problems of institutional racialism, poverty, inadequate infrastructure, environmental degradation and automobile-based planning contributed to the mayhem. This certainly indicates that our ability for disaster management did not progress well with the so-called progress of humanity. To re-iterate, disasters hit us in all shapes and forms. Each one of them presents their own set of challenges. There are, however, some general planning guidelines we can follow, which high-value urban development courses like Masters of Urban Planning can incorporate into their curriculum. Resilience Planning, hence, becomes a strong part of advised activities to be taken for better and faster disaster management for the future. There is extensive literature available on the management of disasters and measures to be executed. However, pandemics are given little consideration in this category. Pandemics are indeed, slightly different from other disasters, in the sense that they threaten people and not infrastructure directly per se. However, the COVID-19 pandemic created an interrelated set of problems that include fear and confusion, risks of illness and deaths, healthcare system stress, travel restrictions, isolation, quarantine requirements, mental and physical stresses, plus loss of income for individuals, businesses and governments, which threaten local, national and global economies. Principles of Resilience The way to deal with the gloom and, doom that the disasters bring upon us, is to put in place structures for resilience. The resilience to deal with unexpected changes in the economy, shift in social dynamics, and general abruption of what we have now decreed ‘normal life’. Most literature that we have,
prepares us for facing problems in relation to physical infrastructure and climate changes. However, what we might be failing to consider is the economic stress, the vulnerable population of daily wage labourers, and people who have to wonder where their next meal is going to come from. Preparation and Responsiveness In order to deal better with pandemics and future disasters, we need to execute structures which have us already prepared for a disaster before it strikes. Trustworthy leadership brings about this kind of strong measures, which helps empower residents so that they can be completely transparent with the authorities . Robust Redundancy The infrastructures and urban planning executed should be so robust, that no pandemic or disaster can shake it. Of course, we can never predict the severity of a disaster striking us and in case our infrastructures do end up failing, we have redundant resources or infrastructures in place that will instantly step up to keep the somewhat natural flow of life going for human beings. Diversity When our infrastructures are diverse, like for example, we have better alternatives to vehicles, to obtain resources and to conduct our lives in somewhat similar fashion, it will help us cope better when some of our privileges are taken away in times of extreme challenges. Human intelligence allows us to generalize lessons from previous experiences to solve new problems. The COVID-19 pandemic is a good learning experience. The bad news: we face diverse and unpredictable risks, with no simple solutions. You can run, but you cannot hide. The good news: cooperative actions can lessen death tolls significantly. Given appropriate support, we can be healthy and happy when confronted with economic, social, and environmental shocks. Original Source: https://medium.com/ansal-university/building-disaster-resilience-amid-a-pandemic-cf6e12f5d924
