Individual Disaster Preparedness in Drought-and-Flood-Prone Villages in Northwest China: Impact of Place, Out-Migration and Community

Abstract

Rural communities are generally more vulnerable to natural hazards when compared to urban communities. Moreover, rural communities are diverse and unique in their place, population, agricultural production and culture, which make it challenging for different rural settings to prepare for disasters. There is a little comparison made about the individual disaster preparedness among rural communities with different geographic landforms. In this study, we examined the individual disaster preparedness of rural residents in three drought-and-flood-prone villages with different landforms (plains, loess plateau and mountains) via a cross-sectional self-report structured questionnaire survey conducted in Northwest China. We also adopted an ecological framework to examine the determinants of villagers’ individual disaster preparedness across different dimensions: place, individual sociodemographic factors, family socioeconomic status, hazard adaptations, community and neighbourhood influences. We found that place was a significant factor for disaster preparedness when controlling individual sociodemographic and family socioeconomic factors. The level of preparedness in the plains was higher than both mountains and plateau. Moreover, the villagers who had out-migrated to work reported a higher level of disaster preparedness than did local villagers. In addition, the community and neighbourhood played an important role in determining individual disaster preparedness. This research highlights the needs for tailored community-based disaster risk reduction programs to improve villagers’ knowledge and skills of disaster preparedness.

ICD-11 Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Complex PTSD Among Hospital Medical Workers in China: Impacts of Wenchuan Earthquake Exposure, Workplaces, and Sociodemographic Factors

“…The factors that had a significant and positive association with HMWs' PTSD and CPTSD scores were not being exposed to the earthquake and working in a hospital that was distant from the epicenter (i.e., Hospital A). These findings confirm that geographical location has a significant role in an individual's adaptation following a disaster as previously reported ( 38 ). Another possible explanation for these findings is that we only examined the effect of Wenchuan earthquake exposure on PTSD and did not evaluate the effects of other natural disasters (e.g., floods) on HMWs' mental health.…”

Flood Disaster Preparedness Study in Banjar City, West Java

“…Adjusting for the influence of community, the region is no longer very significant in the set of preparedness enablers, supporting the idea that community has a strong influence on disaster preparedness (Guo et al, 2021).…”

Preparedness Integration Education as an Effort to Improve Community Behavior in Facing Volcanic Eruption

“…Berbagai ancaman ini mengharuskan masyarakat untuk meningkatkan perilaku kesiapsiagaan dalam menghadapi bencana. Kesiapsiagaan bencana adalah perilaku yang dapat mengurangi risiko cedera, kerusakan dan memfasilitasi kemampuan untuk mengatasi gangguan sementara yang terkait dengan aktivitas bahaya (Guo et al, 2021).…”