Top Up Approach In Disaster Management

Top-down and bottom-up are the common approaches in planning and management. Top-down planning focuses on policy implementation lead by central governments as the policymaker. It tries to answer some questions related to consistency of objectives achievement outlined attained by implementing officials and target groups (Sabatier, 1986). Central government use defined procedures and standards to measure all planning achievements. However, there are limitations of top-down approach in implementing the policies drawn by central government, because it tends to maintain the policymaking process based on limited key actors and neglect strategic initiatives coming from other stakeholders, such as street level bureaucrats or policy subsystems (Hjern

This approach focuses on strategic interactions among multiple actors in policy network (Sabatier, 1986) and involves various public and private organizations in implementing policies (Hjern & Hull, 1982). One of the focuses of bottom-up planning is participation of various informal stakeholders in designing and realizing government programs. Coming as the answer of top-down planning limitation, community participation in disaster management and planning process is useful to adopt social and environmental injustice issues as well as practical needs of problem solving in community

Scholars enlightened significances of informal stakeholders’ involvement, especially local community and civil society organization in spatial planning and disaster management. First, community involvement would shape clear power and responsibility between government and local community (Paton & Johnston, 2001). It is essential to avoid overlapping of responsibility and strengthen the partnership of community and governments. Second, participation might accommodate community knowledge and best practice responds during disaster mitigation process (Cadag & Gaillard, 2012). The micro level knowledge will be the decent support for policymakers to carry solutions closer to impacted people. Third, the participation might support governments to design applicable programs since communities capable to recognize and solve specific local problems using their specific skills in identifying specific issues and managing complex problems in local level. Fourth, community participation will fulfil local priorities (Gray, Enzer, & Kusel, 2001). By involving community on land subsidence management, government could integrate community needs and their programs as well as order the designed-programs from the most to the least important in community perspective. Fifth, community involvement in planning and management stages will guarantee sustainable benefit