Empowering local governments in making cities resilient to disasters: Research methodological perspectives

The paper aims to elaborate the research methodology adopted for a doctoral research study aimed at developing a framework to empower local governments to make cities resilient to disasters in the built environment context. Based on the constructionism epistemological undertaking and the theoretical perspective of being interpretivistic in nature, the research falls under the category of qualitative research. Therefore, qualitative strategies were best suited for conducting the study. Various research strategies exist for qualitative research such as case studies, ethnography, grounded theory and phenomenological research. The research seeks to investigate how local governments can be empowered to make cities resilient to disasters in the built environment context and, out of the available qualitative research strategies, case studies were identified as the most appropriate research strategy for the research discussed in this paper. The paper compares and contrasts the available research strategies and puts forward the suitability of the case study research strategy in order to achieve the aims and objectives of the research. In doing so, the paper outlines the inherent components of the methodology namely, research philosophy, approach, strategy, choice, time horizon and techniques while justifying the suitability of the selected methodology through various research methodology literature.