Situation of Coping Practices of the Hazards and Disasters at Urban Poor Community in Dhaka City (1991-2017)

The urban poor community in Dhaka city is vulnerable to various environmental hazards e.g., fire, flood, water-logging, diarrhea etc. The risk is increasing for the arising tendency of the hazards due to the climate change effects. The inhabitants have mitigation and preparedness activities as well as the government organizations and NGOs have also different actions to reduce the risks and impacts. This paper aims to know the situation of mitigation and preparedness activities to reduce the risks and impacts, and the situation of response and recovery practices at the hazard prone urban poor community in Dhaka city. The data has collected firstly from the secondary sources to find out the hazard and disaster incidents and the affected communities or areas since 1991 to 2017. Then the primary data has collected by a questionnaire survey from the twelve affected communities as well as field observations. There are various coping practices have found to reduce the risk and impacts but not satisfactory. The mitigation activities e.g., use of safe oven, maintaining life insurance, road expansion etc. are very poor. Preparedness activities for the potential hazards are also poor, which increases the possibility of impacts. The emergency response actions are hampered for the narrow roads and no road connection. The relief provision as the recovery practices is helpful but not adequate as the needs. A large proportion of the households have to be indebted to fulfill the needs. Their socio-economic development is hindering for the poor coping practices of the hazards and disasters. It is necessary to improve the coping practices to ensure the sustainable development.