CHAPTER II Review of Related Literature Disasters are indeed detrimental to the development and evolution of one state or nation.

Most of the occurrence of devastating disasters happens in the pacific regions belonging to the pacific belt of fire. Compilations of studies both partly and fully sponsored by the Asian Development Bank with the aforementioned issue will be of vast help to the researchers. According to (Baha, 1991): They often cause severe damage to the Banks (i.e. Asian Development Bank) economies of developing member countries (or the DMCs). Losses from natural disasters reduce the pace of sustained economic development in many countries and often lead to a heavy drain on their domestic resources. Unfortunately, natural disasters are a common occurrence in the Asian and Pacific region. The resulting suffering is great, especially of the poorest strata of the population. The impact of natural disasters can be mitigated through structural engineering measures and non-structural policy intervention. However, only some of the Banks DMCs have well established disaster mitigation plans and designed strategies and measures to carry them out in the face of great adversity. The shortage of critical data, technical know how and financial resources often prevents many DMCs from implementing appropriate disaster mitigation policies and creating institutional arrangements for effectively dealing with disasters.

Furthermore, at par to the above mentioned passage, the content of (Disaster Mitigation in Asia and the Pacific, 1991) where the idea borrowed above was lifted encompasses the Philippines as one of the observed countries compiled in the book. The report conveys: The Philippines, a lower-middle income country, has well established structural and non-structural disaster mitigation systems in place, but implementation seems not to be as effective as might have been hoped. The effectiveness of the typhoon and flood warning systems appears to be decreasing while loss of life and damage due to typhoons appears to be increasing. The key need is to improve disaster mitigation practice.

A manual created by (Golez, 2006) on what an average Filipino family should do during disasters asserts essence of the need to be prepared of such disasters. He says that: To be prepared is to anticipate what can happen to our families and communities during disasters. Disasters can trigger or aggravate potential hazards in every situation we may happen to be in. We need to identify the different hazards and disasters our communities are vulnerable to. Hazards are potential sources of danger, and the possibility that this danger can harm our families is called risk. There are a lot of unpleasant mishaps that may befall our families or communities Encouraging participation of residents within the community is deemed essential to mitigate or prevent the root cause of disaster. (Iglesias, 2011) believes that a community-based disaster risk management can actually translate good urban governance. He concludes that:

Disaster management approaches had traditionally been done by national government or state government, with top-to-down flows of decisions. A rethinking of the approach emerged when this was proven ineffective, since decisions were made using assessments, priorities and perceptions of people who were not among those who were directly affected by the positive and negative impacts of decisions. CBDRM (Community-based disaster risk management) pits community participation at the heart of the process so that the main stakeholder and the most vulnerable to disaster will have greater roles over the decisions and mitigation activities. The experience with the selected communities of Dagupan City has shown precisely this subsidiarity of the role of preparedness as the people are volunteering to be first responders, giving their time to be trained and drilled, and supporting the institutionalization of the EOC in the community. CBDRM promoted greater sharing of the information between city government and community, to enable both set of actors to make their respective decisions and implement mitigation activities. The eight barangays in Dagupan City are contributing to the flood early warning system by providing their own monitoring and alerting schemes, and worked with emergency management with the citys emergency management plan. This reflects the principle of transparency. The communities of the barangays have also demonstrated greater civic engagement by supporting the advocacy for disaster preparedness at the city0lever legislation process. Sustainability of CBDRM and good urban governance will be the main challenge that remains for the communities of Dagupan. They have already been trained to teach others

about the process so it will be up to them to continue the work. Future research could revisit the city and the eight barangays after five years to see if greater scope for disaster risk reduction from R.A. 10121 has interacted with the process (Gautam, et.al., 2011) takes into account the role of flood risk management culture in the changing natural and physical environments of lower west rapti river basin in Nepal. After their study, they had concluded that: Based on participatory tools, the study demonstrated that local communities have their own coping and adaptation mechanism based on their local knowledge against flood disasters. They have an existing informal CBFRM (Community Based Risk Flood Management) System in practice from historic time. But with the evolving flood situations due to increasing human interventions, vulnerabilities to flood hazards have been on rise. Poverty further brings in vulnerabilities to flood. The PCA and VCA approaches widely used in the field of disaster risk reductions are available for assessment of flood related vulnerabilities and capacities of the community. These approaches are base on PRA tools and form a staring point of the CBFRM. PRA problem tree, problem and priority ranking, mobility mapping, timeline, seasonal calendar, cause-effect analysis etc. can be used to catalyze the community to draw their own vulnerability, capacity, hazard and risk maps which can form a base for the community prepare a CBFRM action plan. In all these processes, conventional technical inputs can be effectively fused through discussion and facilitations by the technical and social experts with the communities. The era of big flood control scheme is still on-going, however attention needs to be focused on community based flood disaster risk management because it is realized that no such structure can prevent flood unless otherwise local people are well prepared for worst situation. Local knowledge and inertia will give significant input to CBFRM system and bring active participation. Although traditional knowledge on flood risk management has great potentiality to reduce disaster impact, scientific inputs and environmentallysensitive mitigation measures are essential in changing climatic and physical environment of the flood plains, and the new paradigm of flood management should be focused on harnessing benefits of conventional hydrology/hydraulic and social sciences.