Appendix 3: AJDTS journal article (2021)
In 2021, Harmony submitted a write-up of this project to the Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies (2021, vol 25, no.1).
Repia, H and Bailey, J (2021).
Designing tsunami risk communication with communities: A site-specific case study from Tūranganui-a-Kiwa, Aotearoa New Zealand, AJDTS, 25 (1).
Abstract
This paper describes a student research project that proposes ways to build earthquake and tsunami awareness through a community-centred approach to tell the story of tsunami as a potential risk. This project is centred on Tūranganui-a-Kiwa (the Poverty Bay region on the East Coast of Aotearoa New Zealand’s North Island), an area close to the Hikurangi Subduction Zone which is liable to produce tsunami with little or no time for an official warning. Recent research has revealed that these coastal communities have low levels of tsunami awareness and high expectations of receiving a formal warning before evacuation. In response, this project examined ways to incorporate Mātauranga Māori with Human-Centred Design to produce a meaningful and relevant narrative for encouraging community conversations about tsunami risk. This approach can increase ownership of risk management and recognises that communities, especially tangata whenua - “people of the land”, or indigenous communities who have authority in a particular place - hold various bodies of knowledge that can contribute to future risk management. A combination of methods comprised a co-design process, underpinned by Kaupapa Māori research principles, including developing personas and conducting semi-structured interviews and participatory workshops. A narrative developed through this design process manifested in a sculptural pouwhenua - marker posts, usually carved, that are used to mark boundaries of significant places - articulating local earthquake and tsunami hazards. This speculative output was presented in Wellington and Tūranganui-a-Kiwa and is envisaged as an ongoing conversation prompt. This paper describes and reflects on this research process as one that intertwined Human-Centred Design with the author's own situated knowledge as an emerging Māori design researcher. It suggests that a design process that is responsive to community, geography, and culture, undertaken without a predetermined outcome, is valuable in two ways: for the learning that takes place dialogically through the process itself and the potential for an artefact initiated through this process, which embeds narrative storytelling, to catalyse further dialogue in the community and expert groups and between the two.