Журнал географии и стихийных бедствий
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The organizational network legacies in response to flood inundation events in rural and urban areas of Sri Lanka

Ananda Y. Karunarathne

Organizational networks are becoming increasingly recognized as
important metaphor of disaster related studies. This is because
the organizational networks have often been involved with the disaster
risk reduction (DRR) and management activities in plenty.
This empirical research reveals the factual evidences of interorganizational
network practices in Sri Lankan flood disaster events.
This study considered two flood affected rural district secretariat
divisions (namely Kuruwita and Elapatha) and one urban district
secretariat division (e.g. Colombo) for empirical research. This
case study considered one of the non-probability sampling techniques
called snowball sampling method. This is because it was
quite typical task to select the appropriate personals/organizations
with more comprehensive experiences and memories in a systematic
way, despite this is with some of inheriting biases. Semi-structured
interviews were conducted with selected respondents and
their memories were recorded in note books and some of them,
particularly their oral histories tape-recorded in accordance with
their approval, and finally analyzed the contents. Primary data collected
based upon questionnaire survey, focus groups interviews
and self-observation with some of informal interviews in order to
identify the organizational network activities of flood inundated
study areas. There were 50 stakeholders (including local community
organizations) and some of Grama Niladari Officers (GNOs,
n= 10, Female = 4) were interviewed and also eight focus groups
interviews were conducted in order to collect the primary data
on the organizational network practices in the flooding events.
Network data were analyzed and made some of network graphs
by using UCINET software. Significant findings are revealed that
Kuruwita and Elapatha DSDs have experienced with more organizational
networks respectively compared to the urban Colombo
DSD. In Particular, they have involved with the provision of
information, food, water and other basic needs; evacuation and
moving out belongings; provision of shelters; moving in belongings
back; cleaning up contaminated households and public places;
provisions of emotional and financial supports are strongly
helped and mattered for securing and reviving flood-affected livelihoods.
In this context, his study may be the first attempt of attending
with analyzing of organizational network practices in the
disaster management notion in Sri Lankan context. Therefore,
more importantly this study bridges the gap of the existing body
of literature on organizational networks behaviors in Sri Lankan
disaster management discourse.