A Way Forward to Integrating Cascading Risk into Local Resilience Strategies in Central Asia

This research developed a way forward to integrate cascading risk into local resilience strategies in Nur-Sultan, Bishkek, and Dushanbe, the respective capitals of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. To do so, it met three core objectives:
1) To examine stakeholder awareness and perceptions of cascading risk and interconnected failures.
2) To evaluate the extent to which cascading risk and interconnected failures are considered in existing strategies for resilience.
3) To understand local capacities and priorities for actions to integrate cascading risk into local resilience strategies.

It was hypothesised that if the integration of cascading risk and interconnected failures in existing resilience strategies was insufficient, then the results could outline:
1) Inadequate awareness (consciousness) and understanding (knowledge) of cascading risk amongst key stakeholders.
2) Acknowledgement of the relevance of cascading risk to resilience but limited local capacities to develop and implement strategies.

Research followed a mixed methods approach comprising a questionnaire and semi-structured interviews. This dataset includes only the questionnaire data, to preserve anonymity. Data collection was carried out in July 2021 and targeted mixed stakeholders working in fields relating to disaster risk reduction, resilience, infrastructure, urban development, and urban policy in Central Asia.

The questionnaire was designed in SurveyMonkey, comprising 20 questions across six pages including an introduction which stated the target audience and completion time (5–10 minutes). Judgment and snowball sampling identified participants. The questionnaire was made available in English and Russian and completed online on a self-administered basis, accessible via two web-links distributed via email and LinkedIn. Question 1 asked what location participants answers best related to, with an option for general/regional if participant knowledge was not specific to one locality.

The questionnaire received 115 responses, of which 55 were considered valid based on a completion rate of at least 50 percent. The high number of responses with low completion was considered a result of the questionnaire design and sampling method. Almost half of participants only answered Q1 (location). Subsequent questions were not visible until ‘next’ was clicked, and whilst the introduction stated the target audience, participants contacted through snowball sampling may have deemed their experience not relevant after reviewing questions in the following sections.

Sheet 1 'Raw' is the raw data for the 115 responses collected. Sheet 2 'Accepted' includes the 55 responses that were accepted for this research, based on a completion rate of at least 50 percent. Sheet 3 'Accepted & Translated' includes the accepted responses, with the 15 Russian responses translated to English. Sheet 4 'Numerical' details the accepted responses, converted to numerical data where possible.