Resilience and seismic risk perception at school: a geoethical experiment in Aiello Calabro,southern Italy

The last few years have seen the debate on the geoethics of environmental and climatic protection growing to include resilience as a central idea within this new discipline, which holds many similarities with geography. Resilience analysis often looks at the capacity to re-establish conditions of equilibrium within a system which has been hit by a serious shock, e.g. a natural or man-made disaster. Geoethics works, in tandem with geological analyses and the geography of risk, to inform a population and develop integrated risk management in such a way as to strengthen a community’s resilience. The aim of this work is to study some people’s capacity to overcome what was potentially a disastrous event and, through a process of reconstruction, turn it into an occasion for growth. The experiment, carried out in the primary and middle schools in Aiello Calabro (Calabria, southern Italy), was conducted on the basis of the belief that there is a close relationship between a population’s having a realistic understanding of the risk of such an event, e.g. an earthquake, and high levels of resilience. We also tried to gain an insight into the relationship that may exist between resilience in primary and secondary school children and methods of coping which give an appropriate management of seismic risk. To be more precise, we try to discover whether there is a link between good/appropriate resilience and good/appropriate risk management.     

Role of women as risk communicators to enhance disaster resilience of Bandung,Indonesia

This study addresses the need for women risk communication and highlights the potential role of Women Welfare Associations (WWAs) of Bandung, Indonesia, as risk communicators. A risk communication framework is modeled for women’s risk communication process. A set of indicators in social, institutional, and economic resilience activities (SIERAs), with a scope of 45 activities covering three different disaster periods, were developed to characterize the delivery process of risk information by women in WWAs through their activities at sub-district and ward levels. The data were collected through a questionnaire survey method using the risk communication SIERA approach. Women’s leaders at wards were surveyed concerning their perceptions on these 45 scopes of SIERA, ongoing activities, and their risk information source and dissemination process. Correlation analysis was applied to determine the relationship between the variables such as periods of disaster, types of activities (social, institutional, economic), and attributing factors (location, population, and education institution) in finding variations in risk communication activity that functions for women and communities. Five risk communication processes of WWAs are identified and implemented that work for women in Bandung. When their perceptions and ongoing activities are compared, activities such as dissemination of disaster risk information, conveying early warnings to their peers, and involvement of the local government have been confirmed to match the risk communication plans and implementation of WWAs. These indicate that WWAs’ activities in Bandung implement a certain degree of risk communication that is embedded in their activities. The results confirm that women through their social networks can become active agents of change and thus act beyond their usual domestic roles and responsibilities in order to contribute to the overall enhancement of community resilience.

     

The impact of behavior on the risk of injury and death during an earthquake: a simulation-based study

The use of casualty modeling in the field of disaster management is well established. Nevertheless, it is currently based almost exclusively on damage to the built environment and fails to consider additional factors that may influence the number of casualties in a given event, such as behavioral features of the exposed population. The present study has taken an innovative approach and integrated behavioral traits of residents in a high-risk area in northern Israel, near the Dead Sea Transform, into a well-known casualty estimation simulation. The expected behavioral characteristics of residents during an earthquake, in city sectors with different socioeconomic rankings, were assessed using a designated survey and were applied into the casualty estimation process. In order to test the sensitivity of the behavioral factor, twelve synthetic earthquake scenarios were designed. The results shed light on the relationship between specific behavioral strategies and casualty projections and suggest that loss estimation models that do not take behavioral factors into account may overestimate the projected number of casualties. Households with low socioeconomic status were found to be more vulnerable in terms of risk of injury and death compared with those ranked higher. The present study shows the importance of raising public awareness regarding proper behavior prior to and during the event which can help increase resilience of communities, mitigate risks and losses and ultimately save lives. Further implications of these results and possible ways of improving casualty modeling and community resilience are also discussed.     

Assessment of potential sediment disasters and resilience management of mountain roads using environmental indicators

In recent years, extreme rainfall events occur frequently, causing serious watershed sediment disasters, destroying mountain roads, and endangering the safety of residents' lives and property. This study aims to deal with the spatial change of potential sediment movement on the road slope pre-disaster and to screen disaster hot spots for early warning and control system. The conceptual model is used to simulate the distribution of primary and/or derived disasters on a watershed scale to assess the impact of sediment disasters caused by heavy rain event. Correlation analysis shows that the models in assessment of primary disaster and derived disaster are significantly correlated with the collapse ratio and disaster ratio, respectively. Since the primary disaster has been considered when calculating the derived disaster risk, the terrain subdivision along Provincial Highway 21 (Tai-21) is extracted to understand the derived sediment disaster on the road slope. The model can effectively evaluate the road sections prone to disasters. According to the risk level, the hot spot of road slope disasters and the management of disaster resilience are determined and can be the reference for disaster prevention and control.

     

Predicting the resilience of transport infrastructure to a natural disaster using Cox’s proportional hazards regression model

Transport infrastructure is at significant risk of direct damage from extreme climate events such as flooding, where the cost implications of delayed recovery are generally significant. Previous research in this regard has focused on the technical and engineering aspects of infrastructure construction. The risk management of resilient transport infrastructure is poorly considered, and little has been done to quantify the capacity of transport infrastructure to recover from the impact of natural disasters under varying conditions. This paper applies Cox’s proportional hazards regression model to determine the rate of recovery and cumulative probability that recovery occurs for transport infrastructure across regional areas in New South Wales, Australia. Data for post-disaster reconstruction projects over the period 1992–2012 are used to analyze recovery rate against geographic region, natural disaster type and post-disaster transport infrastructure reconstruction cost. Results demonstrate that transport infrastructure recovered slowest when the failure is the result of a flood rather than bushfire or storm, and in regions with a riverine geography. To validate the accuracy of the model, a bootstrap resampling technique is used. The bootstrap result confirms that the model is robust and reasonable.

     

Re-specifying disaster risk: concepts,methods, and models

The discussion on the social-ecological dimensions of hazards is constantly evolving. This paper explores the trajectory of research relating to hazards and their impact on vulnerable human populations. Interpretations of disaster risk have included estimating losses in terms of human life and property, and analyzing the social mechanisms in place that exacerbate or mitigate a population’s sensitivity to hazard events. In keeping with recent trends in research relating to disaster risk, the paper focuses on the social dimension of vulnerability and the contribution of social structures and relationships in building community resilience. Institutional frameworks and policies in particular determine the quantity and quality of resources and services available to people that contribute to resilience over time. The hazard-risk-location-model (HRLM) is proposed that is based on re-specifying disaster risk in terms of exposure and coping ability to capture the focus on social vulnerability and resilience. The framework of the HRLM incorporates the following components: (1) linkages within existing social capital; (2) spatial variation in social and institutional frameworks; (3) positive and negative feedbacks; and (4) characteristics of the hazard event. The model contributes to the range of place-based assessments designed to address the human-environmental impacts of hazards and disasters.     

The diversity of resilience: contributions from a social science perspective

The paper presents contributions to the widespread resilience paradigm from a social science perspective. Certain aspects of social systems, especially their symbolic dimension of meaning, need to be taken into account in the endeavor to research coupled social–ecological systems. Due to the symbolic dimension, disasters are defined as the failure of future expectations, and social resilience is defined as the social system property of avoiding or withstanding disasters. In relation to this, three capacities of social systems (adaptive, coping, and participative) that constitute resilience are presented. The adaptive capacity is the property of a system in which structures are modified to prevent future disasters, whereas the coping capacity is the system’s property of coping with calamitous processes that occurred in the past. The participative capacity is a measure of the system’s ability to change its own structures with regard to interventions by other systems, decreasing the system’s resilience. The concept of resilience provides important epistemological and political insights and can help overcome an orientation tied together with the concept of vulnerability that blocks social capacities for the mitigation of disasters.     

Mechanisms of Storm-Related Loss and Resilience in a Large Submersed Plant Bed

There is a growing emphasis on preserving ecological resilience, or a system’s capacity to absorb or recover quickly from perturbations, particularly in vulnerable coastal regions. However, the factors that affect resilience to a given disturbance are not always clear and may be system-specific. We analyzed and synthesized time series datasets to explore how extreme events impacted a large system of submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) in upper Chesapeake Bay and to identify and understand associated mechanisms of resilience. We found that physical removal of plants around the edge of the bed by high flows during a major flood event as well as subsequent wind-driven resuspension of newly deposited sediment and attendant light-limiting conditions were detrimental to the SAV bed. Conversely, it appears that the bed attenuated high flows sufficiently to prevent plant erosion at its inner core. The bed also attenuated wind-driven wave amplitude during seasonal peaks in plant biomass, thereby decreasing sediment resuspension and increasing water clarity. In addition, clear water appeared to “spill over” into adjacent regions during ebb tide, improving the bed’s capacity for renewal by creating more favorable growing conditions in areas where plant loss had occurred. These analyses demonstrate that positive feedback processes, whereby an SAV bed modifies its environment in ways that improve its own growth, likely serve as mechanisms of SAV resilience to flood events. Although this work focuses on a specific system, the synthetic approach used here can be applied to any system for which routine monitoring data are available.     

Assessing the resilience of Delhi to climate-related disasters: a comprehensive approach

The study addresses disaster risks in Delhi through a resilience approach. It utilizes the Climate Disaster Resilience Index (CDRI) tool, which assesses disaster resilience from five dimensions: physical, social, economic, institutional, and natural. Each dimension comprises 5 parameters, and each parameter consists of 5 variables. The study is carried out in the nine revenue districts of Delhi and reveals that East Delhi is least resilient and New Delhi is most resilient. The CDRI analysis in East Delhi points out the urgent need to focus on key parameters such as housing and land use, population, intensity and frequency of natural hazards, ecosystem services, and land use in natural terms. On the other hand, New Delhi is the most resilient due to all five dimensions, where most significant parameters responsible for its high resilience are housing and land use, population, income, employment, intensity and frequency of natural hazards, ecosystem services, and land use in natural terms. In addition, the overall results of all nine districts show an inverse relationship between resilience score and population density. For example, districts with higher population density show low resilience and vice versa. Moreover, districts located on hazard-prone areas show low resilience. For example, East Delhi and North East Delhi scored low resilience because they both are situated on the Yamuna flood catchment areas. The study further develops key suggestions that are required to address disaster risk in all nine districts of Delhi and discusses future implications of CDRI to address city??s vulnerability. The approach??s distinctness is reflected through its consideration of micro-level diversities and presents some implications to resilience.     

Vulnerability assessment through index modeling: a case study in Muriganga–Saptamukhi estuarine interfluve,Sundarban, India

The coastal regions, deltas, and estuaries are severely affected by the sea level rise and cyclonic activities and climate changes. Sundarban delta is one of the most mysterious landscapes in the world, which has successively evolved due to sediment accumulation by the great Ganga and Brahmaputra river system. The area is characterized by low-lying islands and a flat topography coupled with macro-tidal activities, powerful surges, and seasonal cyclonic events. All these conditions put together this landscape defenseless to frequent flood and erosion. Since the last hundred years, the face of Sundarban has been changed remarkably from wildest to human-occupied territory by protecting this low-lying flat plain from tidal inundation through artificial embankment. In this background, the current study attempts to highlight the spatial extent and magnitudes of internal risk factors of the region using the composite vulnerability index. Coastal vulnerability defines a system’s openness to flood and erosion risk due to hydrogeomorphic exposures and socio-economic susceptibility in conjunction with its capacity/incapacity to be resilient and to cope, recover, or adapt to an extent. Coastal vulnerability assesses the potential risk from erosion and flooding of any low-lying coastal region due to its physiographical and hydrological exposures, socio-economic and political susceptibility, and resilience capacity. A natural system affects the socio-economic scenario of any region. Hence, multidimensional databases can be more effective to understand the extent of exposure, susceptibility, and resilience of any system. To throw some light on the situation of vulnerability of western estuarine Sundarban, between Muriganga and Saptamukhi interfluve, the composite vulnerability index has been carried out to delineate the magnitude and spatial extent of vulnerability with the help of quantitative techniques and geospatial tools. The estuarine tracts and coastal parts of the Ganga delta are two of the most densely populated areas in the world. The study highlights the critical situation of the population under different potential risk classes residing in the study area with the intention of suggesting some proper course of action of planning and management to conserve coastal communities in their original habitat.     

Increasing fiscal resilience to disasters in the Pacific

Pacific Island countries are among the list of countries that face the highest disaster risk globally—in per capita terms. In recent years, governments in the region have been confronted by a rise in damages from extreme catastrophic events, many increasingly linked to climate change. These events pose significant challenges to Pacific governments in terms of maintaining fiscal stability and the operation of their limited and under-diversified economies and shallow financial sectors. Governments in the region generally play a leading role in domestic economies and are responsible for leading disaster prevention, mitigation, and recovery efforts. Accordingly, measures to improve financial sustainability and the public sector’s ability to provide public services in the aftermath of major disasters must be prioritized. This paper examines the literature on fiscal resilience to disasters, the estimated impacts of major events in the Pacific, and analyses the applicability of available financial instruments to facilitate both ex ante and ex post disaster fiscal risk management in the region. The paper also discusses policies that can improve resilience against fiscal risks.

     

Integrated risk assessment of multi-hazards in China

Maps of population exposure, vulnerability and risk to natural hazards are useful tools for designing and implementing disaster risk mitigation programs in China. The ranking of provinces by relative risk to natural hazards would provide a metric for prioritizing risk management strategies. Using provinces as our study unit, from the perspectives of hazard exposure, susceptibility, coping capacity and adaptive capacity, this study first constructed China’s disaster risk index for five types of major natural hazards: earthquakes, floods, droughts, low temperatures/snow and gale/hail. Then, the relative risk level at the provincial scale in China was assessed. Finally, the hotspots with the highest hazard exposure, vulnerability and risk were identified. The results showed that high exposure was a significant risk driver in China, whereas high vulnerability, especially social vulnerability, amplified the risk levels. Similar to the population exposure to disasters, the relative risk levels in the southwestern, central and northeastern regions of China were significantly higher than those in the eastern, northern and western regions. The high-risk regions or hotspots of multi-hazards were concentrated in southern China (less-developed regions), while the low-risk regions were mainly distributed in the eastern coastal areas (well-developed regions). Furthermore, a nonlinear relationship existed between the disaster risk level and poverty incidence as well as per capita GDP, demonstrating that disaster losses in middle-income areas are likely to increase if economic policies are not modified to account for the rising disaster risk. These findings further indicated that research on disaster risk should focus not only on hazards and exposure but also on the vulnerability to natural disasters. Thus, reducing vulnerability and population exposure to natural hazards would be an effective measure in mitigating the disaster risk at hotspots in China.     

The district of North Vancouver’s landslide management strategy: role of public involvement for determining tolerable risk and increasing community resilience

This paper examines the public involvement processes contained within the Landslide Management Strategy for the District of North Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. Following a fatal landslide in the Berkley neighborhood in 2005, the District of North Vancouver convened a community-based Natural Hazards task force to establish risk-tolerance criteria for natural hazards. This paper describes the community task force approach and evaluates it against four criteria for successful public involvement: representative participation; early involvement; information availability; and impact on policy. It is identified that the District could have incorporated a broader understanding of risk, allowing public perspectives to influence the initial framing of the risk issue before charging the Natural Hazards task force to arrive at quantitative risk-tolerance criteria. The District could also have sought to engage a somewhat more representative portion of the population to serve on the Natural Hazards task force, seeking to incorporate a broader set of public values and types of knowledge. Notwithstanding, the Natural Hazards task force successfully utilized social, legal, and scientific information for informed decision-making, and their recommended risk-tolerance criteria were enacted into policy by the District of North Vancouver as a result of the process. The paper also investigates the District’s ongoing public involvement and education efforts with respect to landslide risks, considering information accessibility and its usefulness for increasing individual capacity and community resilience. Overall, the District’s ongoing, dynamic approach to risk management promises to empower individuals and foster resilient communities in the aftermath of the tragic Berkley landslide.     

Spatiotemporal changes in population distribution and socioeconomic development in China from 1950 to 2010

Complex factors, including those associated with human and natural geography, have contributed to a longstanding imbalance in the relationship between population distribution and socioeconomic development in eastern and western China. Applying the population distribution structure index, the Gini coefficient of population distribution, and analysis of the movement of the population center of gravity and spatial autocorrelation, this study simultaneously analyzes the spatial characteristics of population density in China and the trends in its temporal and spatial variation from 1950 to 2010. It was found that while China’s population distribution has increasingly balanced development, the overall pattern of the spatial distribution has not changed significantly. Although the “Hu Huanyong Line” is still a valid representation of the country’s population distribution, the population distribution in parts of Gansu, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia has extended the boundary of the Hu Huanyong Line. The Chinese population has experienced a trend of movement towards the west. While the congruence between the population distribution and economic development of the country as a whole was relatively low, it was relatively high in the northeast and the relationship is steadily improving. Compared with the eastern and central regions, the western region has experienced a fluctuating and weakening trend.     

Rethinking flood risk communication

Flooding is a serious hazard across Europe, with over 200 major floods documented in the last two decades. Over this period, flood management has evolved, with a greater responsibility now placed on at-risk communities to understand their risk and take protective action to develop flood resilience. Consequently, communicating flood risk has become an increasingly central part of developing flood resilience. However, research suggests that current risk communications have not resulted in the intended increase in awareness, or behavioural change. This paper explores how current risk communications are used by those at risk, what information users desire and how best this should be presented. We explore these questions through a multi-method participatory experiment, working together with a competency group of local participants in the town of Corbridge, Northumberland, the UK. Our research demonstrates that current risk communications fail to meet user needs for information in the period before a flood event, leaving users unsure of what will happen, or how best to respond. We show that participants want information on when and how a flooding may occur (flood dynamics), so that they can understand their risk and feel in control of their decisions on how to respond. We also present four prototypes which translate these information needs into new approaches to communicating flood risk. Developed by the research participants, these proposals meet their information needs, increase their flood literacy and develop their response capacity. The findings of the research have implications for how we design and develop future flood communications, but also for how we envisage the role of flood communications in developing resilience at a community level.     

Regional vulnerability assessment for debris flows in China—a CWS approach

Based on former conceptual models of vulnerability, this paper aims to improve the quantitative model for regional vulnerability assessment by analyzing in-depth the relation between vulnerability, exposure, coping capacity, and resilience. Taking the mountain settlements in the upper reaches of Min River, China, as a case study, the method of Contributing Weight Superposition (CWS) is applied in establishing both a model and a system for the vulnerability assessment of elements at risk. The CWS approach consists of 13 index factors including population, economic and road densities, building and farmland coverage, hazard-affected areas, urbanization rate, and GDP per capita. Accordingly, a debris flow hazard vulnerability zoning map was obtained and the assessment results show that the distribution of high and comparatively high vulnerability zones, where economic activities are considerably high, has a close correlation to the topography of the catchment and population characteristics. The results thus may serve as a pertinent guidance for settlement relocation, population distribution readjustment, and management to prevent and reduce hazards in the upper reaches of Min River and beyond.     

Resilience as transformative capacity: Exploring the quadripartite cycle of structuration in a Mozambican resettlement programme

The concept of resilience has emerged out of a complex literature that has sought to make sense of an increasingly interconnected world that appears ever more beset by crises. Resilience’s appeal is reflected by the burgeoning mass of literature that has appeared on the subject in the past five years. However, there is ongoing debate surrounding its usage, with some commentators claiming that the term is inherently too conservative a one to be usefully applied to situations of vulnerability in which more radical social change is required. This article extends existing efforts to formulate more transformative notions of resilience by reframing it as a double-edged outcome of the pre-reflective and critical ways in which actors draw upon their internal structures following the occurrence of a negative event, thus reproducing or changing the external structural context that gave rise to the event in the first place. By employing a structuration-inspired analysis to the study of small-scale farmer responses to a flood-induced resettlement programme in central Mozambique, the article presents a systematic approach to the examination of resilience in light of this reframing. The case study findings suggest that more attention should be paid to the facilitative, as well as constraining, nature of structures if vulnerable populations are to be assisted in their efforts to exert transformative capacity over the wider conditions that give rise to their difficulties.     

Adaptive Delta Management for flood risk and resilience in Dordrecht,The Netherlands

Many countries across the world are experiencing strict austerity measures due to the economic crisis. As a consequence, public financing for stand-alone adaptation to flooding and drought will become scarcer in the (near) future, and this hampers the pursuit of resilience (i.e. the ability to remain functioning under a range of hazard magnitudes). In such times, key challenges for adaptation are further complicated by weaker investment dynamics and an increased tendency to ‘work in silos’. These are: to minimise regret with respect to maladaptation, which results from over- or under-investment in water hazard management; to exploit the opportunities for mainstreaming adaptation to flooding and drought into other investment agendas; and to deliver multiple benefits for society and the economy, such as increased biodiversity, liveability and competitiveness. These common challenges drive the best way in which to adapt to uncertain climate and socio-economic changes. In the Netherlands, the Delta Programme has developed and applied a structured and well-defined approach (called Adaptive Delta Management) for including and acting upon uncertainty around these future changes. This approach allows for greater transparency to decision-makers and stakeholders, because it adheres to four specific steps for strategy development. This paper presents the current understanding of Adaptive Delta Management and an illustration of the approach for the management of flood risk and resilience in Dordrecht. It examines the added value and limitations of Adaptive Delta Management concerning its application in the context of the Delta Programme, with a specific emphasis on the lessons learned from Dordrecht.

     

Resilience and reworking practices: Becoming the first-generation of industrial workers in Can Tho,Vietnam

For more than a decade, labor geography has stressed the importance of ‘giving primacy’ to workers in the analysis of global economic restructuring. However, the majority of contributions have focused on organized workers, leaving the issue of individual labor agency much in the dark. The aim of this article is to shed light on the agency of individual workers involved in rapid industrialization processes. In this endeavor we draw inspiration from recent contributions that have integrated Cindi Katz’s threefold categorization of agency as reworking, resilience and resistance. In combination with this categorization, we apply a distinction between workers’ intentions to enter the industrial labor market and the consequences of doing so (i.e. the outcomes of their engagement). The discrepancy between intentions and outcomes is indicative of labor agency and points to the structural constraints that condition the labor market. The empirical part of the article draws on interviews with local and migrant first-generation workers in two settlements located next to an industrial zone in Can Tho Province in the Mekong River Delta Region of Vietnam. It is suggested that the alternating practices of reworking and resilience can be conceptualized as transformative trajectories - workers’ situated knowledge and practices evolve and change over time and is conditioned by the specific labor market contexts through which the individual moves.     

Rethinking the relationships of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation from a disaster risk perspective

Vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation are three fundamentally inter-related concepts among such research communities as global environmental/climatic change, social–ecological and disaster risk science. However, their mutual relationships are still unclear so far particularly in the field of disaster risk reduction, which to some extent blocks the reasonable risk analysis and scientific decision making. This paper performed a brief overview on the basic definitions and evolution processes of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation, and tentatively categorized past diverse thoughts of their relationships into three modalities, such as, vulnerability preference, resilience preference, and overlapped relationships. From a “hit-damage-recovery-learning cycle” insight and based on an empirical case study, we put forward two conceptual frameworks to address the relationships of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation within the disaster risk domain, and we further discussed their broader implications in terms of disaster risk management and social–ecological sustainability. In an attempt to bring together the analytical frameworks of vulnerability, resilience, and adaptation, this study indicates that a sustainable adaptation strategy to the unavoidable disasters or changes should not only seek to reduce the vulnerability of a social–ecological system, but also to foster its resilience and adaptive capacity to future uncertainties and potential risks.