The adaptation of Australian community disaster resilience scorecard & self-assessment of community disaster resilience (Cdr): Kelantan's flood affected communities

INTRODUCTION: Community disaster resilience is the community abilities to adapt to the changes at their living place caused by any hazards exposure using its own personal and environmental resources. This concept is very important for the individual, social groups or social-ecological system to absorb, withstands, live with and accommodate disturbances and it can be an important link between social cohesion and resilience. In the face of the need for Malaysia to re-look and develop the country’s sustainable disaster recovery policies and rebuilding post-disaster, the level and how to measure our community disaster resilience and the impact of social cohesiveness is unknown. AIM: This study aims to evaluate and adapt the use of Australian community disaster resilience balanced scorecard, assess community resilience factors and its association with social cohesion. Methodology: This mixed method design study through participatory discussion; the key persons from the six (6) Kelantan communities 2014 flood affected area. Following that communities were surveyed on their disaster resilience status within 6 month period in 2015. The instruments used are the Australian Community Disaster balance scorecard, CCRAM28, Buckner’s Index of Cohesion and Index of Perceived Community Resilience. Data analyzed for descriptive and inferential analysis using SPSS software. A total of 386 samples recruited (population= 668 559) (confident interval of 95%) and we gain 100% returns rate. RESULTS: The disaster resilience balance scorecard adaptation was seen positive by the community key persons. The self-test indicate that their communities’ resilience resilient were in caution zone (yellow) or require improvement. A total of 386 respondents’ completed the questionnaire (100%); most are female, stays in the village and with low income. The finding shows marital status (positive and weak relationship) (r (95) = 0.108, p = 0.017); education level is (negative) (r (95) = -0.142, p = 0.003) and had injury during emergencies or disasters is (negative and weak) significantly correlated (r (95)= -0.111, p= 0.015) to disaster resilience. Five resilient factors identified shows (positive and strong) correlation to the community, and strong relationship between each factors (leadership (r (95)= 0.690, p = 0.000), collective efficacy (r (95) = 0.740, p = 0.000; preparedness (r (95)=0.669, p= 0.000; place attachment and social trust also has a strong relationship with community disaster resilience at r (95)= 0.619, p=0.000 and r (95) = 0.534, p = 0.000 consecutively. Living expenses were found to be significantly correlated (weak) with communities’ social cohesion at r (95) = 0.164, p = 0.001). The finding shows that there was a moderate correlation between disaster resilience status and social cohesion (0.474), although the strength of the relationship varies. Findings also show that a place-specific differentiation in the mean intensity of both cohesion and resilience scores; temporal phases of disaster recovery for each community are also noted. CONCLUSION & DISCUSSION: The adaptation of the balanced scorecard is a good initiative for the key person involves the disaster management as it can be used as a guideline to evaluate the community resilient status, top- down perspective, while the survey on the community disaster resilient from communities themselves serves as an evaluation from the down to top perspectives. The findings of this study can be concluded that there were discrepancies between the key persons that involves the management of disaster and their communities. As the resilience status shows the communities were in the ‘caution zone’ should be taken as important and methods to increase community resilience and awareness must be materialized. Despite the survey, confirmed that the level of community disaster resilience considered acceptable, the resilience factors were strongly related to each other. The positive and strong correlation between demographic profile of respondents and community disaster resilience may indicate that any increased in resilient factors, thus community disaster resilience will also go higher and vice versa. The finding also shows that social cohesion is highly associated with community disaster resilience. This indicates that if there is lacked cohesiveness, their resilient level will be low. Consistent evaluation of resilience and social cohesion status and activities to build resilience should be carried out on regular basis throughout the country. This can be done through better communication, cross-community cooperation, maximizing opportunities to compare their plans and actions that suit to local contexts, report and share the plan of action locally and international internationally