key: cord-0918640-hq682xqo
authors: Jayasekara, Ravindu; Siriwardana, Chandana; Amaratunga, Dilanthi; Haigh, Richard
title: Evaluating the network of stakeholders in Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEW) for multiple hazards amidst biological outbreaks: Sri Lanka as a case in point
date: 2022-04-04
journal: Prog Disaster Sci
DOI: 10.1016/j.pdisas.2022.100228
sha: c45c3950c524c2b3fac335b136403e33963914ee
doc_id: 918640
cord_uid: hq682xqo

Synergized impacts of simultaneous hazards amidst COVID-19 have called for the need for highly collaborative multi-sectoral approaches for disaster preparedness planning. In such a context, this study aims at evaluating the network of stakeholders in the National Early Warning System of Sri Lanka during preparedness planning. Social Network Analysis was used to visualise the network of stakeholders for selected hazard scenarios. Furthermore, a series of key informant interviews were conducted focusing on disaster preparedness planning during the recent multiple hazard scenarios. The findings highlight the need for a framework to guide the stakeholder coordination in preparedness planning for multiple hazards.

DMC is responsible for coordinating early warning and risk assessment activities. Although a national early warning system exists, past studies have highlighted several gaps related to early warning mechanisms in the county. Both authorities and the public community are responsible for these gaps and issues Perera et al., 2020) . Furthermore, recent studies show that activities such as risk communication, risk assessments, and preparedness and response planning related to biological hazards mainly depend on the public health sector (Amaratunga et al., 2020a; Jayasekara et al., 2021b) . The need for emulating multi-sectoral approaches to mitigate the impacts of biological hazards and potential cascading impacts is significantly highlighted. However, a limited number of studies have been conducted to identify the effectiveness of the stakeholder coordination in preparedness and response planning in Sri Lanka in a multiple hazards scenario that features a pandemic such as the COVID-19 outbreak.

In this context, this paper attempts to evaluate the network of stakeholders of disaster preparedness and response planning in MHEW systems for compound hazard scenarios that include biological outbreaks taking Sri Lanka as a case in point. Social Network Analysis (SNA) has been used in this study to identify the network of stakeholders engaged in preparedness and response planning in the country for concurrent hazards amidst a pandemic. Furthermore, insights from experts who are involved in the disaster management activities in country were used in this paper to validate the findings of SNA with practical conditions occurred in preparing and responding to concurrent hazards amidst COVID-19.

The occurrence of multiple hazards simultaneously can synergistically devastate a community.

For instance, climate-related hazards such as floods, storms, and landslides that induced severe disasters during COVID-19, have posed challenges in responding to multiple hazards at the same time. When relevant authorities for disaster management in a country have to deal with several crises coinciding, response measures taken for one disaster can cause an increase in the impacts of another (UNDRR and OCHA, 2020) . For instance, imposing rules on social distancing to mitigate the severe effects of COVID-19 can affect the response measures for a concurrent hazard such as tsunami, flood, etc. During the COVID-19 outbreak, coping capacities of emergency responses were reduced, although the occurrence of an additional disaster amplified the challenges (Chondol et al., 2020) . During the COVID-19 outbreak, options available for safe evacuation were limited due to social distancing and restrictions on J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f movements. Therefore, it was predicted that large evacuation measures for a concurrent hazard scenario could trigger a drastic increase in the morbidity and mortality of the pandemic (Collins et al., 2021) (Vikas, 2020) (Mohanty et al., 2021; Potutan and Arakida, 2021) .

Natural and other hazards did not stop occurring because of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. A multiple hazards situation such as natural hazards during a pandemic can synergize socio-economic vulnerabilities in a country Devakumar et al., (2020) (Nordling, 2020) .

The twin impacts of compound hazard events can adversely affect communities that are already marginalized and severely affected (Chen and Cook, 2020; UNDRR and OCHA, 2020) . For instance, travel restrictions and quarantine rules have resulted in an inadequate supply of food and relief items to victims of natural hazards in India and Bangladesh (Suri, 2020) . (UNDRR and OCHA, 2020) . The compound impacts of the pandemics combined with concurrent disasters can further affect the health system of a country that is already overwhelmed by the pandemic.

Hariri-Ardebili, (2020) illustrates that the loss of functionality of a hospital turns out to be rapid during parallel hazardous events in which natural hazards and pandemics co-occur. During the COVID-19 pandemic, withstanding the dual impacts of concurrent disasters became a significant challenge to the healthcare system win several countries such as Croatia, Fiji, Japan, etc. (Čivljak et al., 2020) . (WMO, 2020) . (Al Jazeera, 2020) . Such synergized impacts of multiple disasters occurring simultaneously have made evident the dire need for a proactive multi hazard approaches in disaster risk reduction.

The impacts of concurrent hazards during the COVID-19 pandemic and its cascading effects have demonstrated that hazard by hazard disaster risk reduction must be altered to a multihazard approach, including high-level disaster preparedness. Developing ways to isolate, measure and manage or prevent systemic risk with a sound understanding of cascading risks has become a challenge currently (UNDRR, 2020b) . In this regard, governments have a major responsibility to make complex and highly compromised decisions incorporating the need for mitigating impacts of multiple hazards and cascading effects (Filippelli, 2020) . International and national policies need to be altered to address contingency plans aiming to improve prevention, preparedness, mitigation, response and rehabilitation to multiple concurrent hazards (Cardil and de-Miguel, 2020) . In this regard, risk governance, disaster management capacities, multi sectoral coordination, community engagement, early warning systems, etc. are vested with a major responsibility (Rogers et al., 2020) .

Out of these possible strategies, emulating a multi-sectoral coordination is paramount in reducing the disaster risk of concurrent hazards and cascading impacts of pandemics. The coordination of multi stakeholders is important in enhancing the preparedness and response planning against possible multi-hazards contexts, such as a tsunami amidst the pandemic (UNDRR, 2020c) . Countries should ensure the effectiveness coordination between both government departments and non-government organizations in disaster preparedness and planning (Haigh et al., 2018; UNDRR and OCHA, 2020) . Bangkok Principles for implementation of health aspects of the Sendai Framework emphasizes the necessity of integrating health into planning process at national and local levels (UNISDR, 2016) . The collaboration between health officials and disaster management authorities is considered significant. The unfavourable cascading impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic validated the need for following these principles (UNDRR, 2020a) . According to recent studies local actors have a major role to play in preparedness and response planning for compound hazard events at the initial stages (UNDRR and OCHA, 2020). In multi sectoral approaches, collaboration with relief services, communitybased organizations, and private sector organizations considered significant specially in relation to addressing potential cascading impacts. Likewise, multi sectoral coordination stands paramount in preparedness and response planning for multi hazard events (MacClune et al., monsoon seasons and depressions in the southeast Bay of Bengal. For instance, the country received over 200 mm rainfalls within 24 hours in May 2020. In Kegalle District, which was the most severely affected, nearly 2000 victims and 400 damaged houses were reported during these heavy showers. High winds and landslides were the main reasons for damaged houses and victims (Flood List, 2020a) . Sri Lanka received heavy showers during the period from 2 nd to 5 th of December due to the Northeast monsoon and activation of depression in the southeast Bay of Bengal. During these heavy rainfalls, the northern province of Sri Lanka is worst affected (IFRC, 2020) . During Cyclone Burevi, DM officials took anticipatory actions, and thousands of people were evacuated to safety centres in the Northern and Eastern provinces (Flood List, 2020b) .

In 2021, the Southwestern region in Sri Lanka received more than 300mm rainfall within 24 hours due to the activation of Southwest monsoon winds. The National Disaster Management Centre (DMC) has reported with a month starting from the 2 nd of May 2021, 84 divisions in 10 districts were affected during heavy showers. A total of 245,212 victims were reported within the said period, with 14 deaths. Furthermore, two persons were missing due to floods and cutting failures at the time of reporting (DMC, 2021) . Recently in late October 2021, a total of 62,247 people across 17 districts have been affected due to heavy showers followed by floods and landslides. Within a period of two weeks, 20 deaths were reported from districts; Kurunegala (6), Badulla (4), Kegalle (4), Puttalam (3), Matale (1), Galle (1), and Mullativu (1) (Davies, 2021) .

Since the Southwest monsoonal showers in 2021 were received during the third wave of COVID-19 in the country, the preparedness and response capacities of the country's DM mechanism for multiple hazard scenarios were intensively tested.

Currently, in Sri Lanka, the Disaster Management Centre is legally mandate to execute the national-level disaster preparedness activities ensuring its last-mile dissemination in collaboration with relevant technical agencies and committees for hazards identified in the Disaster Management Act of the country (Amaratunga et al., 2020b) . Although Sri Lanka has a devised disaster preparedness and planning mechanism for multi-hazard contexts, recent studies have stressed severe gaps in the system. Poor coordination among government departments, lack of human resources, poor stakeholder communication, lack of clarity and accuracy, bottlenecks in communication skills are a few of the existing gaps in the current disaster management mechanism (Malalgoda, 2014; Perera et al., 2020; Rathnayake et al., 2020) . Recent studies, that have focused on mitigation of COVID-19 and concurrent hazards in the country, have stressed the need for multi sectoral coordination in disaster management J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f Journal Pre-proof approaches (Amaratunga et al., 2020b) . Recently carried out study has explored the communication networks of stakeholders during emergency preparedness phase for different hazard events. The results emphasize the complexity of operating procedures in several hazard events (Shehara et al., 2019) . However, there is no effort taken towards evaluating the behaviour of stakeholders in communication networks during compound events. This can be highlighted as a research need since recent studies on early warning mechanisms for pandemics as well stressed the need for the collaboration between public health sector and disaster management authorities .

In order to address the research question, which was mentioned earlier in the introduction, this study has aimed to evaluate the behavior of communication of network of stakeholders in preparedness and response planning for multi hazard contexts amidst biological hazards. In this regard, Sri Lanka has been taken as a case study since Sri Lanka is exposed to a variety of hazards as described below. Accordingly, this study consists of three steps as detailed below.

This study attempts to identify and analyze communication networks of stakeholders for possible multiple hazard scenarios in the country during a pandemic according to the existing national early warning system. Cyclones, floods, droughts, landslides, vector-borne diseases and coastal erosion are considered the most frequent hazards that affect Sri Lanka (Tissera, 1997) . Though tsunami is not a frequent hazard, its potential damage is considerably high. Sri Lanka has its highest risk index among all types of disasters for tsunamis (8.9 out of 10) (Amaratunga et al., 2020c) . Cyclones, floods, and landslides are hydrometeorological hazards that occur simultaneously in the country. Most of the time, Sri Lanka experiences localized and seasonal floods and landslides (Abeysinghe et al., 2021) . Therefore, considering the frequency and impacts of hazards occurring in the country, the following scenarios shown in Table 1 were selected for the study. 

In order to identify the stakeholders in preparedness and response planning for selected multiple hazards scenarios in Sri Lanka, recently published disaster management action plans (Perez and Germon, 2016) . Recently, SNA can be observed as a frequently used tool in disaster-related studies to analyze relationships between varied stakeholders who are implementing DM mechanisms (Rajput et al., 2020; Suwanmolee, 2014) .

Communication networks are represented visually in SNA as a network of nodes connecting to one another. In a social network, centrality can be defined as a parameter that denotes the most important, central, or influential nodes (Das et al., 2018) . To show the behavior of a communication network, various centrality parameters are employed. As indicated in Table 3, this study selected four centrality parameters to analyze the network of stakeholders involved in the integration of biological hazard preparedness into the country's Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) planning. This parameter indicates the degree of control a member has over the information flow based on his position in the network Eigenvector centrality

This parameter helps to identify most influential nodes in the communication network Since these centrality parameters are utilised to measure the interconnectedness of nodes in a network, the most significant and powerful authorities in the network of stakeholders involved in biological hazards preparedness and response planning can be identified based on the values obtained for each parameter. Furthermore, the centrality parameter values indicate which actors in a network of stakeholders have the most power to regulate the flow of information. To model the network of stakeholders involved in pandemic emergency planning and response operations, it is necessary to map how stakeholders are connected to one another. Accordingly, the links between stakeholders were identified with reference to emergency operation procedures and disaster management plans scrutinized as part of the desk study.

A series of in-depth key informant interviews were conducted to investigate the challenges faced by stakeholders of the existing early warning system in the country during recent climatic related hazards amidst the third wave of COVID-19 pandemic in Sri Lanka. Fourteen (14) key informants were selected, using purposive sampling technique. In selecting key informants, existing national early warning system was followed since it covers the organizations/institutes that are supposed to be engaged in disaster risk management process according to the national disaster management plan.

Accordingly, experts were selected from organizations/institutions that represents the national early warning system as shown in Figure 1 . These interviews were conducted using a structured questionnaire regarding the following aspects: impacts of COVID-19 on existing early warning systems for other hazards, changes in the early warning mechanisms during the pandemic, stakeholder coordination during COVID-19, and suggestions to improve the existing EW system for future multiple hazard scenarios. Furthermore, using the centrality parameters described in Table 3 , stakeholders were ranked in order to identify the significance and roles of stakeholders in the communication networks related to selected potential multiple hazards scenarios. The top three stakeholders under each centrality parameter were shown in Table 4 for the four hazard scenarios. pandemic, it was highlighted that haphazard structures were established despite the presence of already formed agencies for coordinating and implementing disaster management mechanisms (Amaratunga et al., 2020a) . Key informants have highlighted that the presence of these haphazard structures and ad-hoc task forces also have often created power struggles at the regional level during the Southwest Monsoon 2021. Therefore, there is a higher possibility in the future as well to experience power struggles between authorities due to the complexity of operating procedures.

The National Disaster Management Act in Sri Lanka stipulates that DMC is the legally mandated agency to execute and coordinate the disaster management mechanism in Sri Lanka ( Within these communication networks, technical agencies mainly influence the flow of information with risk knowledge and hazard forecasting. In most cases, the preparedness and response planning depends on the accuracy, timeliness, and reliability of these shared information. Given that, according to SNA results the involvement of technical agencies influences preparedness and response planning mechanisms of a large number of stakeholders, the effectiveness of information shared by technical agencies have a great significant.

However, at the moment, there are several issues in existing early warning mechanisms in Sri

Lanka that have been brought to light by previous studies. Accordingly even before COVID-19, there have been issues such as lack of public trust due to low accuracy, lack of clarity and false predictions, and lack of use of technological platforms (Jayasekara et al., 2021; Perera et al., 2020 have the authority to join the preparedness and response activities unless there is an invitation from the government. Therefore, it is the responsibility of government DM officials to request the support of non-government agencies since they are equipped with the required resources as well. For instance, the possibility of using networks of NGOs for early warning dissemination and risk communication to last-mile was emphasized during key informant interviews. At the moment, agencies such as Sri Lanka Red Cross have a network of officials from the national to divisional level through the district level.

Furthermore, the findings of key informant interviews highlight that the existing early warning system of the country can be supported with existing tools. For instance, the International Organization of Migration (IOM) has a separate system called displacement tracking matrix to investigate impacts of victims and basic needs. Moreover, NGOs focus more on the special needs of vulnerable communities in disaster management activities. According to recent studies, DM activities in the country lack attention towards the special needs of vulnerable and marginalized populations (Jayasekara et al., 2021a; Perera et al., 2020) . In this regard, DM officials can get the support of NGOs who are mandated for addressing the needs of vulnerable communities. Furthermore, the effective coordination with local authorities and provision of adequate support to them is another key strategy in strengthening multi-hazard response mechanisms. According to the results, local authorities play a key role within the communication J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f network for selected hazard scenarios. However, their engagement must be further strengthened with human resources, funding and political support.

This study evaluates the network of stakeholders in preparedness and response planning for simultaneous hazards amidst biological hazards taking Sri Lanka as a case in point. With the frequent occurrence of unpredictable and extreme climate-related hazards and other hazards, the paramount importance of being proactive in planning for compound events was greatly highlighted. Risk governance, emergency response and preparedness measures, institutional collaboration, community engagement in disaster preparedness planning and response, and the wellbeing of vulnerable communities were greatly affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. The containment measures for the pandemic have disrupted the response mechanisms for other hazards and vice versa. In addressing these challenges, improvements in such as sound legal basis, strong institutional coordination among stakeholders, emulation of a multi-sectoral approach including the health sector, empowering local authorities, strengthening hazard forecasting and predictions. Out of these improvements, this study has particularly aimed at the behaviour of stakeholders in multi-institutional communication networks.

In this regard this study has utilized Social Network Analysis method to analyse the network of stakeholders for four selected multiple hazards scenarios. Furthermore, a set of key informant

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests