Managing Flood Risks In Pakistan:Risk Perceptions,Mitigation Strategies,Determinants And Constraints

Pakistan is one of the most adversely affected countries by climate-related extreme events such as floods owing to its geographical and climatic conditions.Over the last two decades,the frequency and severity of flood events have been increased and adversely affected the local livelihoods and well-being of millions of people in Pakistan.The development of effective mitigation policies requires a clear understanding of the impacts and local responses to extreme events are relatively scarce in the developing countries like Pakistan.The assessment of household vulnerability and resilience level,estimation of risk perception and adverse impacts,and associated adoption capacity is not only important,but a very challenging research question given the data constraints and inadequate literature available on adoption measures to deal with flood disasters in Pakistan.Therefore,this dissertation focuses on flood mitigation strategies and identifies human-environment interactions by exploring household vulnerability and resilience level,risk perceptions and impacts on local livelihoods,adaptation measures,disaster preparedness of the local authorities in dealing with disaster risk reduction,and evaluation of the existing school’s emergency preparedness in Pakistan.This dissertation consists of nine chapters,including interdisciplinary research and applied both state of the art statistical techniques and indices.The first chapter focuses on the research background which provides an overview of the flooding events and risk reduction measures adopted in Pakistan,problem statement,motivation of the study followed by the study objectives and research questions,schematic conceptual framework and study limitations.The second chapter demonstrates the theoretical framework to understand the concepts related to disasters in general and floods in particular,risk perceptions and impacts,adoption strategies,influencing factors affecting the choice of decisions,adoption constraints,vulnerability and resilience,and capacity of the local institutions in relation to disaster risk reduction to create a better understanding for the readers.The third chapter mainly describes the selection of the study area,sampling procedure and sample size,data collection methods,and analysis of data.This study mainly focused on the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa(KP)province,Pakistan and used a data set of a cross-sectional survey of 600 households collected through face to face interviews from two districts of the KP province namely Nowshera and Charsadda by using multiple stage sampling technique.Additionally,40 respondents from the local institutions and 100 respondents from the school management staff were selected to identify the local institution’s capacity and evaluate the existing school emergency preparedness activities in the flood prone districts of KP.The fourth chapter deals with the assessment of household vulnerability and resilience level of flood disaster by using subjective method.The survey findings revealed that both study areas were highly vulnerable and had low resilience to flood disasters.The study findings indicated that community households in the flood-prone areas of Nowshera district were more vulnerable and less resilient than those in Charsadda,with a higher composite vulnerability index scoring and a lower composite resilience index score.The fifth chapter analyzes the households’ risk perception and perceived impacts of flood disaster and their determinants by using correlation and logistic regression approaches.The results showed that risk perception is strongly correlated with age,education,house type,family size,past flood experience,distance from the nearest water source and access to credit and information sources.The study findings further show that 2010 flood brought severe damage to the houses,agriculture,businesses,and psychological suffering.By using Probit Model analysis,the sixth chapter explores the adaptation measures adopted such as an elevated ground floor(EGF),foundation strengthening(FS),construction of a house with reinforced materials(CHRM),and precautionary savings(PS),influencing factors which can affect the choice of adopting certain measures.The study further indicated that adoption strategies are constrained by several factors,i.e.,financial constraints,lack of early warning system,land use planning,and inadequate resources.Further adoption strategies,also varied across different groups of households based on education,age,and income.The seventh chapter investigates the current capacities around the disaster management cycle,preparedness and the needs of the local institutions in dealing with disaster risk reduction in Pakistan.The study findings highlighted the three main priority capacity gaps such as disaster risk awareness and training,technical support,and funds and infrastructure.These identified gaps can be bridged with the adopted strategies such as capacity building training,technical support and financial capacity and infrastructure building to capacitate the local institutions in disaster risk management.Additionally,this study recommends that the disaster preparedness for effective response need to be strengthened at all levels through the development of local institution’s capacity,community participation and develop sustained and regular programs for the disaster risk reduction awareness with special focus on local authorities.The eighth chapter deals with the assessment of the school emergency preparedness activities and evaluates them by using SWOT analysis.The findings show that the majority of the schools selected in both regions experienced more than one natural disaster includes flood and emergency preparedness activities do practice symbolically in terms of school safety measures.Particularly gaps are highlighted significantly in all four pillars of emergency preparedness and school authorities were not well aware of safety measures and potential threat to children,while schools have limited plans for students with disabilities,continuity of school operations,maps for identifying evacuation routes,emergency equipment and resources,disaster preparedness guidelines and psychological first aid or crisis counseling.The SWOT analysis further indicates that these schools have taken many steps,but still along with strengths,weaknesses exist,and also opportunities are there to strengthen the preparedness level.Additionally,the study stresses the need to overcome under prepared challenges and advocate designing school safety policies as a part of national and local government development plans on emergency preparedness and mitigation.Finally,the last chapter summarizes the key findings of the previous chapters according to the research objectives and the research questions.Conclusions and implications are drawn to inform further research and to provide policy recommendations.