Community Vulnerability and Resilience to Floods and Prospects of Enhancing it by the HAZUS Model

Abstract

Continuous large scale flooding in Manitoba cannot be successfully dealt with by the typical compensation of losses based disaster management approach. The rising cost has even led to a deficit in the provincial budgets in recent years. Using Susan Cutter's “hazard-of-place” model on the collected primary data (using Delphi technique), and by integrating them with the secondary data, the vulnerability of place to flood was measured. The research reveals that, with current disaster management approach, vulnerability is increasing; nourishing social capital has immense potentiality to enhance community resilience to flooding. As inventory of tentative loss and risk estimation is a must for comprehensive disaster management, the prospect of the HAZUS model was explored using proxy data. It was found that HAZUS has the potentiality to estimate disaster costs in dollar values. For a key strategic tool, the research recommends developing the HAZUS model with an up-to-date Canadian database.