7. Knowledge as a precondition for risk governance
8.1. Limitations of this study
This section looks back at the research methods adopted in this dissertation and the limitation they presented in analysis of data and answering the research questions. This study adopted a single case study approach. The scope of study was defined by the land use and building regulation functions of the municipality and their risk reduction capacities. The local municipality, households, building professionals, university and NGO were identified as actors involved in the urban risk governance process and were then interviewed. The limitations of this study are enumerated below:
Problem of generalizability: This dissertation started by analysing the Himalayan urban centres in the State of Uttarakhand. The town of Almora was selected as it exhibited growing urban population and an absence of official land use plan. The single case of Almora was analysed for this dissertation. This raises questions about generalizability of the results. As urban planning is a context specific subject, the results of this analysis and the recommendations made are applicable only in Almora. As the state level structure was also analysed, limited recommendations are also made at state level.
The study makes methodological contributions by including building professionals (both formal and informal) which was identified as a gap in regional as well as international literature (Masson, 2015; Murray, 2017). By the inclusion of building professionals, the study opens up the array of actors involved in governance. Furthermore, the study includes not just positive actions taken to address risk but negative actions that result in risk production. These methodological contributions are valuable across scale, for local leave studies in Almora to risk governance in low and middle income countries in general.
Theoretically, this dissertation expands our understanding of risk in the Himalayas by adopting a vulnerability based approach and underlying the human factors that address or create risk. Finally, as the dissertation drew its theoretical framework from the emergent body of literature on risk governance in low and middle income countries, it contributes back to it by making a case for contextualization of the framework by including local developmental processes, formal and informal actors and multitudes of local knowledge. The table below shows the scale of applicability of the results of this dissertation.
Table 8.1 Generalizability of results and nature of contribution of this dissertation
Practical
Recommendations Methodological contribution contribution Theoretical
Almora (local level)
√
√
-Uttarakhand (state level)
√
√
-Himalayan urban centres -
√
√
Risk governance in low and middle
income countries -
√
√
own compilation Establishing the sample size for household survey: The objective of the household survey was to understand the process of urban development from the household perspective as well as to establish the access to risk reduction knowledge. In doing so houses that had either experienced disaster or those that externally exhibited risk conditions were purposively selected. However, the exact number for such houses was not available in disaster records of Almora. Furthermore, the numbers indicated in the disaster records did not have information on the geographical location of these houses. Hence, houses were identified based on key- informant interviews and field observations. Later, the sample was expanded based on snowballing based on the information provided by the initial set of households. The survey was concluded when saturation in answers was achieved. Saturation of data was observed after around 120 household interviews. Here the online platform of Survey 123 was helpful in providing an overview of themes and data collected. Furthermore, households repeated similar patterns of employing informal building professionals and understanding of risk knowledge. A random sample of houses at risk would be more representative, however because of limited data at the beginning of the survey ‘n’ could not be established and hence purposive sampling was adopted.
Data paucity and access issues in small sized town: As Almora is a small sized municipality, it does not have a website where secondary data needed for initial shaping of the research could be accessed. Furthermore documents like land use plan and building regulations were not available online. This data was available from the municipality office mostly in non-digital form during the field work. Non-access to secondary data pre-fieldwork limits drawing a clear objective picture of the case. Furthermore, considerable time on field trip was spent going back and forth between government offices to gain access to data.
Exclusion of ward level representatives: The dissertation did not include ward level representatives. This is identified as a methodological limitation of this research. This was primarily because they did not formally have a role in the risk reduction process. However,
there was initial research interest in interviewing them to see if they informally addressed risk or to assess their capacity for this task. Multiple efforts were made during field work to contact ward level representatives. However, no response was received during the period of fieldwork. It was finally in the conclusive fieldwork workshop that two ward representatives participated. Future studies are strongly recommended to include ward level representatives as their inclusion is recognised as a gap in risk governance literature.
Exclusion of Disaster Risk Management Authority: There is a District Disaster Management Authority in Almora at a district level and Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre at the state level in Uttarakhand. However based on an analysis of their action plan (DDMA, 2017) as well as based on interviews in their district office (Joshi R 2017, personal communication, 25 February), it was concluded that the focus of their work was on post disaster management. At the time of this research, the DDMA was primarily involved in conducting post-disaster drills and disseminating information on post-disaster scenarios. It did not have a joint program to address disaster in the pre-disaster cycle with the municipality. It was also not involved on collaborating in improving building regulation. Non-participation in the urban risk governance process was the reason for excluding them from the list of actors analysed.