Collaborative Decision-making in Urban Disaster Prevention and Relief: An Interactive Network Assessment of Municipal Agencies
Tzung-Shiun Li, Roger S. Chen* (pdf file)
Abstract
Disaster governance is one of the critical issues of civil service. In the past ten years, while collaborative governance has been under extensive studies with a view to constructing urban resilience to disasters, collaborative decision-making in the context of disaster management has not received much attention. In his previous study (Li, 2017), one of the authors has discussed whether different patterns of collaborative governance and responses are in line with different kinds of disasters. This paper goes further to argue that collaborative decision-making in disaster governance involves four key elements including trust and sharing, information and communication, accountability and norms, and leadership and command. The paper uses the four elements as criteria, the empirical data collected from interviews and the prospective and techniques of social network analysis to assess the characteristics of collaborative decision-making across three different cities -- New Taipei, Tainan and Kaohsiung. The assessment is based on the interactions and perceptions of municipal agencies and is designed to detect the strength and distinctness of the municipal disaster governance. The results of the assessment are expected to contribute to future local decision-making process for disaster prevention and relief.
Keywords: collaborative decision-making, disaster prevention and relief, social network analysis, municipality, Exponential Random Graph Model