6th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC 2016 Integrative Risk Management - Towards Resilient Cities. 28 August - 01 September 2016 in Davos, Switzerland
Impact of a Collective Action in a Disaster-affected Community to Site a Temp...
Fostering Urban Resilience Through Innovative Transdisciplinary Partnerships The Social Work Grand Challenge Initiative, Susan KEMP
1. Fostering Urban Resilience Through
Innovative Transdisciplinary
Partnerships:
The Social Work Grand Challenges Initiative
Susan P. Kemp PhD
IDRC 2016
Davos, Switzerland
2. Presentation Outline
• Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative:
- Create Social Responses to a Changing
Environment
• Implications: New research and practice
partnerships
3. Grand Challenges for Social Work
Initiative (AASWSW*)
Ambitious yet achievable goals, focused on
deeply significant social problems, that:
• mobilize the profession
• foster scientific and practice innovation
• connect social work to other efforts targeting the
same issues
• create significant societal impact
http://aaswsw.org/grand-challenges-initiative/
4. National co-chairs:
Susan Kemp PhD, University of
Washington: spk@uw.edu
Lawrence Palinkas, PhD, University
of Southern California:
palinkas@usc.edu
http://aaswsw.org/grand-challenges-initiative/
5. Priority Areas
• Disaster preparedness and response
• Environmentally induced migration and
population displacement
• Equity-oriented, socio-ecological urban
resilience policies and interventions
• Proactive engagement and inclusion of
marginalized and vulnerable communities
6. Resilience:
A Socio-Ecological Approach
“…a multidisciplinary concept that
explores persistence, recovery, and
the adaptive and transformative
capacities of interlinked social and
ecological systems” (Elmqvist, 2014)
Elmqvist, T. (2014). Urban resilience thinking. Solutions, 5, 5, 26-30.
7. “Reducing social vulnerability
must go hand in hand with
efforts to increase ecological
resilience.” (Shi et al., 2016)
Shi, L. et al. (2016). Roadmap towards justice in urban climate adaptation
research. Nature Climate Change, 6, 131-137.
14. The Social Ecology of Urban Resilience:
Community Priorities*
• Affordable housing/displacement
• Wages/jobs (economic insecurity)
• Food insecurity
• Health: individual, family, community
• Racial equity & justice
• Participation and representation: voice
Got Green/Puget Sound Sage (2016), Our people, our planet, our power: Community led
research in South Seattle. http://gotgreenseattle.org/
15. Create Social Responses to a Changing
Environment: Core Strategies
1. Adaptation/refocusing of social work roles and
interventions: e.g., evidence-based psychosocial
interventions; community engagement/mobilization;
policy advocacy
2. Sophisticated interdisciplinary socio-ecological
research: to develop and hone effective strategies
3. Policy advocacy
4. Impact-oriented partnerships - across community,
disciplinary, sectoral, and national borders.
*Kemp, S. P., Palinkas, L. A., Wong, M., Floersch, J., Wagner, K., …& Nurius, P. (2014). Strengthen the
social response to the human impacts of environmental change. Baltimore, MD: American Academy of
Social Work and Social Welfare.
16. Multidisciplinary Inquiry for Environmental
Change: Urban Microclimates in Knoxville, TN
Lisa Reyes Mason, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
College of Social Work
Kelsey N. Ellis, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Geography
Jon M. Hathaway, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Civil and Environmental
Engineering
Urban environmental justice – interlocking questions of social and spatial justice
Cities as pivotal hubs in global sustainability – key sites of both risk and innovation
Urban heat islands (UHIs), air quality, green space, and other environmental parameters can vary
Need for smaller scale, localized data (“microclimates” or “microenvironments”)
Need for complementary, in-depth information on people’s lived experiences
Can’t be understood through one lens; not only a business problem or a policy problem or a science problem.
Need to bring all fields, from engineering to ethics, ecology to the arts, social sciences and social work, communications and more