Building Resilience for Future Extreme Events: Focusing on Vulnerable and Marginalized Inhabitants and Co-Inhabitants

Dear Colleagues,

Disasters - including pandemics, wildfires, hurricanes, explosions, mass shootings, and civil wars - are increasing in frequency, intensity, and scope, causing catastrophic impacts on individuals, households, and communities worldwide, and in particular, on those who are already vulnerable and/or on the margins. Disasters, however, can bring valuable redevelopment opportunities to redress various societal vulnerabilities, intending to enhance the capacity to prepare for, respond to, adapt to, and recover from extreme events. This type of capacity is understood as resilience - a shared responsibility at individual, household, community, and society levels, among citizens, organizations/institutions, and nations. Again, the global public health emergency of COVID-19 urgently calls for researchers, practitioners, policy decision-makers, and other stakeholders to establish a community-driven approach to contribute to building international communities’ resilience capacity toward current and future extreme events and to support sustainable development. The community-driven approach must be inclusive of all inhabitants, such as those living in poverty, those without housing, those who face discrimination etc., as well as co-inhabitants. 

We propose this special issue to provide an opportunity for the social sciences’ disaster research community to examine the current state and progress in the areas of building disasters resilience, identifying gaps, and reflecting on future directions needed in this field of disaster and emergency management and sustainable development for all. More specifically, building disaster-specific resilience should promote environmental justice and social justice to be aligned with equity, diversity, and inclusion mandates. All types of disasters (natural hazards, technological hazards, and terrorist attacks or other acts of intentional violence), and all disaster stages (pre-disaster preparedness, emergency response, post-disaster reconstruction and recovery, and future disaster mitigation) will be considered. A multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholder engaged approach is welcome.  

Among the “sub-themes” that the editors would like contributors to consider include the following, although this should not be regarded as an exhaustive list: 

Community-driven topics:

• How does the intersection of socio-demographic factors (e.g., race, class, and gender) influence community-based disaster mitigation and disaster-specific redevelopment?
• How do the health consequences of disaster (e.g., physical health, mental health, and overall wellbeing) influence building resilience at the individual, household, community, and society levels?
• How do certain civic institutions or social conditions (e.g., housing stability and educational systems) influence building resilience for all?
• What are the community-based approaches used to empower vulnerable and marginalized residents vis-a-vis community-based disaster-specific redevelopment? 

Organization, policy, and education related topics:

• What are the means, methods, and measures of disaster resilience at the individual, household, community, and society levels?
• How could social policy inform community-based practices regarding building disaster-resilient capacity?
• How can we promote the collaborations between governmental and non-governmental organizations to advance disaster resilience?
• What training and pedagogical strategies are best for educating students and addressing related issues, in supporting communities, especially vulnerable and marginalized communities, to build their resilience capacities?

Dr. Haorui Wu
Prof. Dr. Jeff Karabanow
Prof. Dr. Jean M. Hughes
Dr. Catherine Leviten-Reid
Guest Editors

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