Crawford, L; Langston, C and Bajracharya, B (2012) Building capability for disaster resilience. In: Smith, S D (ed.) Proceedings of 28th Annual ARCOM Conference, 3-5 September 2012, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
All levels of government recognize the widespread devastation of communities by natural or other disasters. They have responded with emergency management arrangements and policies to enhance government and community capacity to anticipate, withstand and recover from disastrous events. Although the construction industry has a significant role to play, particularly in recovery and reconstruction, it has not generally been considered as a key stakeholder in building capability for disaster resilience. One barrier to more active involvement of the construction industry in disaster response and management is that traditional methods of construction project management have been criticized as too time consuming and inflexible for use under circumstances of high uncertainty, requiring rapid response in complex multi-stakeholder environments. The 2011 Queensland floods represent one of the most disastrous extreme weather events of recent times. Using this event as a case study, this paper presents results of analysis of institutionalized discourse concerning structures, policies and procedures for disaster management, and official inquiry reports providing details of response and recovery activity. The aim of the research is to identify the positioning of project management in the disaster management discourse as a first step towards earlier and more proactive involvement by the construction industry and use of project management approaches that contribute to disaster resilience.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | project management; construction; disaster; response; resilience |
| Index terms: | Queensland, disaster resilience, disaster response, case study, recovery, reconstruction, project management, disaster management, construction industry, extreme weather event, construction project management, emergency management |
| Subjects: | financial risk, project management theory and practice, Geography, building construction, emergency and crisis management, industry analysis, data collection methods, climate science, operations management |
| Topics: | Research Practice, Project Management, Geographical Context, Engineering Principles, Cost Management, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCTE |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here