Empowering Local Governments in Making Cities Resilient To Disasters: Case Study as a Research Strategy

The paper intends to elaborate the research methodology adopted for a doctoral
research study aimed at developing a framework to empower the 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 interpretivism in nature, the research would fall under the category of
qualitative research. Therefore, qualitative strategies are best suited for conducting
this 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 have been identified as the most
appropriate research strategy for the research discussed in this paper. The paper
compares and contrasts the available research strategies and claims the suitability of
the case study research strategy, in achieving 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.