Transcending the Pandemic Challenges: Interoperability for Risk Management Among Flood-vulnerable Communities of Davao City, Philippines
Abstract
Disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) is commonly done by governments and institutions through dissemination of information and other activities including capacity building, planning, and institutionalization using different channels and tools to build community resilience and optimize disaster mitigation opportunities. The management of flood-risk communities in a large city like Davao City is a difficult task for policy and decision makers as well as disaster managers knowing that the current COVID-19 pandemic poses constraints in the transactional process. Effective and operational communication, specifically in communicating flood risks, relies on the efficient performance of interorganizational integration with organizations and systems observing interoperability.
Risk communication management plays the central role in risk management and the interoperability mechanism enhances the preparedness of local communities. This paper discusses the risk communication systems and protocols of Davao City, accentuating how flood-risk information is transmitted to the local communities. It describes the role of the institutions and various communication systems as well as the transactional processes in delivering information about risk. With the COVID-19 pandemic, results showed that there were challenges in the transactional process of disaster risk reduction, especially in floodrisk management. Transcending the pandemic has become a critical priority in the interoperability mechanism of the agencies involved in DRRM as well as in the identification of the appropriate alternative risk communication strategies.
