Louis J. Durrant

Purpose: Community is hard to define, but understanding what constitutes a community is crucial for effective decision-making. This article presents the idea of the community mosaic model. The model offers a flexible and operative tool for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to identify and explore communities. Design/methodology/approach: A two-phase systematic literature review established the theoretical definition of community. Following this, the three parts of the community mosaic model were conceptualised. Finally, the mosaic model was tested with a working example of a community association called the La Brouck collective in Belgium. Findings: The article outlines a unique operative tool called the community mosaic model and how it can be applied in practice. Furthermore, the article highlights theoretical insights from the approach and how it can inform practice and policy around Disaster Risk Management (DRM). Practical implications: The community mosaic model helps operationalise the term “community”. It provides DRM experts (and potentially beyond) with a tool to identify community groups and explore why they exist in each context. The model could facilitate the development of fit-for-purpose engagement strategies, map adaptive governance structures, and inform policy, potentially enhancing community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM). Social implications: The article could help to empower community-based disaster risk management. Originality/value: The article defines an original operative tool as the community mosaic model and provides a working example of its application based on real-world experiences. Also, the researchers revised the proposed lifecycle stages of community groups to include the stage “decay”.

Policies are a deliberate system that defines action and guides short-term decisions in pursuing a goal. Policy is a fundamental instrument of governance which is extensively used worldwide. However, not all policies are created equally. Contemporary literature is littered with examples of policy failures, and a large research emphasis is dedicated to co-creating ‘good’ policy. This challenge of developing good policy is exacerbated when we consider the rapidly evolving risks related to climate change. The evolving risks can make it difficult to define valid policy goals over the longer term. Furthermore, stakeholders are increasingly needed across policy and practice to overcome siloed working and co-create transdisciplinary risk management policies, considering both long-term strategic objectives and short- to medium-term operational solutions. Risk management policy instruments are relevant across spatial scales and engage with policies from other disciplines (urban planning, heritage conservation, environmental management). The article presents an innovative tool called the policy matrix to address challenges faced by policy experts. The policy matrix capitalises upon the co-creative research of the Organigraphs technique defined by Durrant et al. (2021) to co-create disaster risk management governance maps. The article compares two policy matrices developed as part of a Horizon 2020-funded project called SHELTER. In its simplest form, a policy matrix arranges risk management policy instruments around an issue depending on their scale of implementation and disciplinary lens. This allows stakeholders to see all the policy instruments considered relevant to some specific issues. It can further provide stakeholders a robust platform to critique those policies. By way of example, providing them with a tool to clearly “measure” the links between these policies, to identify policy gaps in thematic/operationalisation, or, from a practical perspective, to provide a tool for experts to review the level of participation in the design of these policies or the effectiveness of these policies in practice.

Global cultural heritage is threatened by the increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters caused by climate change. International experts emphasise the importance of managing cultural heritage sustainably as part of a paradigm shift in cultural heritage perception, understanding, and management. This paradigm shift has stimulated a need to integrate cultural heritage into pre-existing disaster risk management governance. However, there is currently a lack of robust and practical approaches to map the complex nature of disaster risk management governance. It is here considered that a shared understanding of the respective roles and responsibilities of the different organisations involved in risk management is a critical element in improving the preparedness of cultural heritage sites. The purpose of this article is to present the utility of the Organigraph technique and its main components as a tool to map governance structures, identify key stakeholders, and integrate cultural heritage experts into wider disaster risk management. The article presents a semi-empirical research approach, consisting of four iterative phases in which a series of digital workshops, semi-structured meetings, and bilateral expert meetings were used to co-produce five Organigraphs for heritage sites participating in an ongoing European Project. Our findings suggest that Organigraphs provide a valuable tool at the disposal of practitioners and academics with the potential to provide a basis for cross-national, cross-issue, and cross-scale peer learning between heritage sites. Furthermore, the technique is a valuable self-diagnostic tool to facilitate learning and proactive discussions in the preparedness phase of disaster risk management. Finally, they facilitate the co-creation of solutions through an evolving, interactive platform to integrate data-driven approaches.