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Earthquake hazards and community resilience in Baluchistan

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Abstract

Resilience is widely used from a variety of research perspectives; however, community resilience in particular is applied to a number of natural hazards and disasters-related studies, programs, and activities. It is also acknowledged that its measurement is cumbersome but not impossible. The prime objective of this paper is to measure the community resilience of an earthquake-prone area in Baluchistan. The article presents the concept of resilience, its approaches, selection of indicators, formulation of subjective assessment method for weighting the indicators, and finally, developing the community resilience index. For the community resilience measurement, a survey was conducted among 200 households in two earthquake risk zones of Quetta city, using simple random sampling method. The overall composite community resilience index revealed that the resilience is low in both the zones—A and B. However, it is revealed that there is a significant difference between the zones when compared against the components and indicators. Community resilience components such as economic, institutional, and physical have received higher index values in Zone B as compared to Zone A. Based on the findings, it is recommended to improve the socioeconomic, institutional, and structural (housing) conditions of the community by raising the community awareness and preparedness, implementing building codes, and providing income-generating activities in order to enhance the community resilience to cope up with earthquake hazards in the future.

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Notes

  1. Adobe: A type of Dwellings made of stone, clay and mud.

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Acknowledgments

The Authors would like to express thanks to the “Higher Education Commission” of Pakistan, for Providing Scholarship and research grant to conduct this research at Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand. The critical comments and suggestions made by Dr. Penning Warnitchai, Dr. Mokbul Morshed Ahmad, and reviewers are highly appreciated and duly acknowledged.

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  1. Faculty of Earth and Environmental Sciences (Geography), University of Baluchistan, Quetta, Pakistan

    Syed Ainuddin

  2. Asian Institute of Technology, PO Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani, Bangkok, 12120, Thailand

    Syed Ainuddin & Jayant Kumar Routray

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  1. Syed Ainuddin
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Ainuddin, S., Routray, J.K. Earthquake hazards and community resilience in Baluchistan. Nat Hazards 63, 909–937 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0201-x

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