No abstract

As a rural development approach, concentrated rural settlement (CRS) was used for rural reconstruction when Wenchuan earthquake opened the opportunity window of quick and wide implementation. Although CRS has both proponents and critics, few studies have investigated the recovery success of villages reconstructed with CRS. This research gap has resulted in insufficient theoretical guidance for the practice of CRS and inefficient summarization and transfer of relevant experiences. This study therefore aims to measure the recovery success of three villages reconstructed with CRS located in the hardest-hit areas of the Wenchuan earthquake. Full-permutation polygon synthetic indicator method is adopted to evaluate the recovery success of the three case villages from the economic, social, environmental and disaster relief aspects. It is found that the three case villages have good overall recovery performances as economic, social, and environmental aspects improved a lot from 2008 to 2015, whereas the disaster relief recovery performance increased at the first several years but dramatically decreased at the later years. The implications inferred from the case studies are discussed in detail. This study provides a reference to local governments for monitoring CRS development and for improving recovery of villages reconstructed with CRS.

Frequent typhoons are signi cantly affecting the coastal cities via intensive rainstorms, tidal surges and strong wind. Natural factors such as climate change and global sea-level rise come alongside anthropogenic factors such as rapid urbanisation and land use/land cover change leading to detrimental consequences such as urban oods. This short communication offers various lessons learnt by Ningbo municipality from two strong typhoons that hit the city directly, namely "Fitow" in 2013 and "In-Fa" in 2021. On the one hand, the usage of "Big Data" and "Social Media" for bettering "Preparation" and "Prevention" reduced ood impacts signi cantly. On the other hand, the implementation of "Flood Insurance" speed up the "Recovery" processes. The successful "Preparation", "Response" and "Recovery" helped Ningbo to enhance its ood resilience, and thus substantial impacts of injuries, household damages and associated economic loss were avoided. These three key terms should be heeded in typhoon/ ood governance in which various stakeholders are involved with, and be incorporated into the city's long-term strategic development plans to merge with the climate actions towards 2030s and beyond. This will be vitally important in reducing climatic hazards and improving coastal ood resilience under the future climatic uncertainties in Asian coastal cities.

Frequent typhoons are significantly affecting the coastal cities via intensive rainstorms, tidal surges and strong wind. Natural factors such as climate change and global sea-level rise come alongside anthropogenic factors such as rapid urbanisation and land use/land cover change leading to detrimental consequences such as urban floods. This short communication offers various lessons learnt by Ningbo municipality from two strong typhoons that hit the city directly, namely “Fitow” in 2013 and “In-Fa” in 2021. On the one hand, the usage of “Big Data” and “Social Media” for bettering “Preparation” and “Prevention” reduced flood impacts significantly. On the other hand, the implementation of “Flood Insurance” speed up the “Recovery” processes. The successful “Preparation”, “Response” and “Recovery” helped Ningbo to enhance its flood resilience, and thus substantial impacts of injuries, household damages and associated economic loss were avoided. These three key terms should be heeded in typhoon/flood governance in which various stakeholders are involved with, and be incorporated into the city’s long-term strategic development plans to merge with the climate actions towards 2030s and beyond. This will be vitally important in reducing climatic hazards and improving coastal flood resilience under the future climatic uncertainties in Asian coastal cities. (196 words)