Impact case study database

4.1. Informing disaster preparedness in a post-Soviet Republic

Bankoff’s contribution to Earthquakes Without Frontiers (2013-2018) led to transformational increases in understanding of earthquake hazards in Kazakhstan and led to policy changes by national organisation, affecting the lives of 4.5 million people. The Kazakh Red Crescent (KRC) benefitted directly from Bankoff’s research to address the gap in public understanding in one of the globe’s most seismically active regions, by leveraging the concept of Asar - a set of values from Kazakstan’s pre-Soviet indigenous past and part of a system of village-based reciprocity. According to the General Director of the KRC, Bankoff’s research was integral to driving a wholesale shift in approach: ‘Working together, we were able to expand the reach of our organisation to villages where we had not worked before in South Kazakhstan’. Where much earthquake related DRR focusses on the ‘seismic future’ of cities, Bankoff’s work enabled the KRC to adjust its focus to ‘the countryside and smaller towns, when before most of our attention was on people in larger cities. This shift was driven by our collaboration with this project and has significant long-term benefits’. Data and key findings were shared with a range of state agencies and local authorities, and will ‘positively affect the lives of the population of Talgar and Almaty’ (5.7). Subsequent publications from this research constitute important new insights that conceptually reframe earthquake risk reduction in post-Soviet Central Asia (3.2-3, 5.8). The former Deputy Director of the Red Crescent states that: ‘Working with Professor Bankoff for such an extended period of time provided an important training opportunity for myself and Red Crescent volunteers to engage with best practice research methodologies involved in the planning, creation and administration of surveys, sampling strategies, the organisation and facilitation of focus group discussions, and personal interviewing techniques’. The impact of this research ‘materially contributed to the Kazakh Red Crescent’s ability to reduce the future risk of earthquakes’. Specifically, Bankoff’s work shaped how the KRC approached the challenge of educating the rural segments of Kazakhstan’s 18 million people to the nature of disaster management in a context where the United Nations Development Report concluded that preparation for and understanding of natural disasters was ‘ineffective’. The Deputy Director of the Red Crescent affirms that the collaboration with Prof Bankoff ‘ has had a lasting impact on myself and the other members of the Kazakh Red Crescent’, with the effect of ‘improving our skills base’. In addition, the project generated vital data assets that ‘provided the Red Crescent with a very important database on rural risk perception on which to base future educational campaigns and relief operations’ (5.6).

4.2. Indigenous knowledge and the volcanic environment in the Philippines

Bankoff’s research has added critical, timely and demand-led expertise in countries where state institutions are less robust and have fewer financial resources to contend with environmental disasters. In the Philippines, Bankoff’s projects have built bridges between state agencies and local communities, driving multi-level collaboration that has enhanced community resilience through the adoption of new practices, the development of new strategies of risk and response, and through the creation of ecologies of knowledge-exchange. This research, as the former Director of the Center for Disaster Preparedness, one of the leading NGOs engaged in this field, comments ‘has appreciably contributed to our understanding of such events’ by ‘ highlighting the importance of understanding people’s pasts in what makes communities vulnerable or resilient’ today (5.2). Over the past two decades, too, Bankoff has been ‘one of the leading scholars in the genre of environmental history in the Philippines and, almost single-handedly, pioneered the study and understanding of how societies in these islands have adapted to hazard’ (5.3 & 5.4). His research has directly shaped public understanding of the cultures of disaster and their place in Philippine history and civil society: ‘His work on community resilience and how Filipinos have and do organise themselves, what is popularly referred to nowadays as bayanihan, has shown why historical work is relevant to Filipinos today and how we can learn from the practices of our forebears’ (5.3). This work forms part of a wider initiative to democratise the communication of risk associated with natural hazards, by decentring technical and conceptual registers of western science and making local communities active agents in the communication of risk. This is vital in the Philippines, where over 1.3 million children and adolescents do not participate in education. The approach to bayanihan, which represents a recovery of indigenous knowledge at the intersection of environment and place is now the starting point for the study of local responses to climate change. This approach formed the topic of a November 2020 webinar ‘Structures of Mutual Support’, sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Manila and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, in which Bankoff appeared as an expert commentator (5.5).

4.3. Community level water administration in the UK

Bankoff’s work on local flooding in England began with his expert contribution to the Independent Review Body created by Hull City Council in response to the extensive flooding that impacted the region in 2007. The ongoing ‘ Local Governance and Community Resilience to Floods’ project, which builds on and significantly scales up previous work on flooding in the Humberside region (5.9), has been designed specifically to support the Association of Drainage Authorities (ADA) to improve governance structures and reform the sector. These reforms directly affect 2.2 million people in four English counties with a combined Gross Value Added of c. £30b. As ADA’s Chief Executive writes: ‘ Professor Bankoff’s pioneering research is a key component for delivering this vision that will enhance community-level water administration and provide better flood risk management and water security in an era when we are fighting for resources to protect our communities from the devastating effects of flooding’ (5.10). Since 2018, the research team led by Bankoff has intensely engaged with stakeholders, interviewing local Members of Parliament, local councillors, the Environment Agency, Internal Drainage Board members, farmers and private sector interests to tap local knowledge built on historical experience so as to provide ‘ valuable impact in terms of how we identify weaknesses in the drainage system and how we provide guidance about flood risk management’ (5.10). In this way, ongoing research is building bridges between local communities and state agencies and informing policy with reference to the resonances of past water management experiences and the practical, community-driven solutions they reveal. This locally informed approach to flood mitigation underpins the UoH’s contribution to Ark: the National Flood Resilience Centre, a collaboration with Humberside Fire and Rescue Service, and the Living with Water Project, involving the Environment Agency, the East Riding of Yorkshire Council, and Yorkshire Water. – this research has made a vital contribution to the significant enhancement in research capacity in this area at the UoH, which is driving global collaborations at scale, including a British Academy funded project to examine intercultural and intergenerational knowledge exchange around flooding in Vietnam; the £1.3m Leverhulme Doctoral Centre for Water Cultures. Elements of Bankoff’s approach served as the basis for the UoH’s new MSc in Flood Risk Management, which includes a focus on holistic and community-driven responses to flooding events.