Enhancing investment in Disaster Resilience of the built environment of SMEs: Developing a conceptual framework

The importance of the resilience of the built environment in the overall disaster resilience agenda cannot be overemphasized. Achieving societal resilience requires the joint effort of both the public and the private sector but investments in resilience is much more skewed to the side of the public sector to date. Assessment of HFA priorities for actions performance by UNISDR revealed that Priority 4 is the least performing. Priority 4 is about reducing underlying risk factors; this has to do with the protection of facilities, integrating strategies for climate adaptation, ensuring recovery schemes and social safety nets among others. Recent records revealed that SMEs are not sufficiently prepared for disaster events despite their significant place in the economy. Economic loss which is reportedly on the increase is usually caused by property damage, job loss, service and business disruption among others. SMEs are obviously contributing hugely to the volume of economic loss as a result of poor resilience to disasters. This paper describes a study that intends to investigate issues relating to private investment in disaster resilience and thereafter develop a framework that encourages investment in disaster resilience of the built environment of SMEs through the analysis of disaster resilience levels, risks associated with these levels and economic impact calculations. The relationship between built environment resilience levels, economic loss as well as social loss will be established in the detailed version of the framework. This study focuses on investment at the property/company level i.e. the built environment of SMEs. The built environment is being given a prominence as its ability to absorb the impact of disaster guarantees a faster return of business operations and a reasonable reduction in loss. A conceptual framework anchored on the principle of self-evaluation and self-improvement is hereby presented.