Guidelines for Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment in Disasters

Rapid Environmental Impact Assessment Guidelines, Version 4.2 December 2003
community level meetings.
Recording and Using Information Collected in Communities
Any well done community assessment generates considerable information about past
problems, immediate conditions and plans and expectations of community members about
the relief and recovery process. This information has considerable value beyond the REA. It
has specific uses in project design and recovery planning and in framing longer term
developmental objectives.
As a result, it is necessary that information collected in communities be recorded in a form
and format which permits future use. The results of each community assessment should be
written-up, preferably using a standard data form. A full narrative and statistical report of
assessment results may not be possible immediately after a disaster. But a short summary
of findings should be prepared and circulated to all potentially interested parties.
Each assessment should also have a mechanism to note and pass on issues and
information from communities relating to the effectiveness, transparency and appropriate
allocation of relief and recovery assistance. Any assessment will identify operational gaps
and successes. These need to be signaled to the responsible parties to ensure that the
disaster recovery effort is as effective as possible.
Generating Condensed Community Assessment Information
Information generated through the community assessment needs to be assembled and
condensed into a format similar to that used in the Organization Level Assessment. With
hthe community and organizational information in a similar format, the results of the two
assessments can consolidated for analysis, as described in the following module.
The condensation and prioritization process is accomplished through a three step process
using the Community Assessment Summary form in Annex E. The form contains a set of
questions based on possible environmental issues which may be affecting a community.
Step One
Answer each question with a yes or no using the information from the community
questionnaire.
Step Two
The resulting identification of the prevalence of issues is then prioritized by scoring each
answer according to whether the response for a community is a yes or no, as indicated in
the form. Note that the significance of yes and no answers and the respective scoring
changes between different sections of the form.
These scores are then totaled. Questions with the highest values are considered to be the
issues which the greatest prevalence and expected importance from the community
perspective.
Step Three
Once the scoring and ranking is completed, the final section of the summary form, dealing
with coping strategies and actions, can be completed. In this section, assessment results are
used to identify relief and coping strategies used by the community and enter these actions
in the first column of the form. Each action should be judged as to whether it is having a
positive or negative impact on the environment (second column). Some actions can have
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