Participants of the sixth International Course on Community-Based Disaster Management (CBDM-6) visited the southern part of Thailand on 9 July 2001 to carry out a disaster risk assessment in Community-6, a flood-prone community in Banphu Municipality, Hat Yai. The community experiences seasonal flooding yearly, the most severe being last November 2000.

The participants met with the villagers, established rapport with them, and discussed the hazard, vulnerabilities, and the community's capacity to respond/ cope with the hazard. Analysis was done using the participatory risk assessment (PRA) tools that the participants learned. Shown below are some of the group outputs from the exercise. It is interesting to note that the villagers have not perceived flood as a major risk, but a part and parcel of their lives, not until the November 2000 event.

The outputs of this exercise will become inputs to an ADPC program on urban disaster mitigation being designed for Hat Yai.

Community map drawn by the villagers

 

Group output from the transect walk