Urban–Rural Differences in Disaster Resilience

Social Vulnerability to Climatic Shocks Is Shaped by Urban Accessibility

“…Overall, we found high levels of social vulnerability for Amazonian urban centers. This is congruent with a recent Brazil-wide vulnerability assessment (Hummell, Cutter, and Emrich 2016), although our analysis controls for the potential biases of using only municipal-scale aggregate data that homogenize differences in rural and urban social vulnerability (Cutter, Ash, and Emrich 2016). This is important because the ways in which urban Amazonians cope (or not) with flood and drought events are likely to be qualitatively different from the strategies and capacities of rural communities (Pinho, Marengo, and Smith 2015;Sherman et al 2015).…”

“…To our knowledge, though, no study has adopted a quantitative approach to test for an underlying spatial explanation for interurban differences in social vulnerability. Overall, vulnerability science offers only limited insights into how urban vulnerability might vary spatially (see Cutter, Ash, and Emrich 2016) and even fewer as to why. This is an important shortcoming because, for example, marginalized remote rural communities are highly vulnerable to climate change (Maru et al 2014) and this might also be true for remote urban centers.…”

Capturing Bonding, Bridging, and Linking Social Capital through Publicly Available Data

“…In the recent years, disaster managers and scholars have focused on building disaster resilience around the world (Bakkensen, Fox‐Lent, Read, & Linkov, ; Cutter, Ash, & Emrich, ). In the United States, building community resilience has become a foundational concept for effectively managing disasters (Pfefferbaum, Van Horn, & Pfefferbaum, ).…”

“…Our paper makes several contributions to the literature. First, while a variety of indices capture demographics such as race, age, and income (e.g., Cutter, Burton, & Emrich, ; Cutter et al, ), few have focused primarily on social ties despite growing recognition of their importance in resilience. Next, many past studies have used data and information that NGOs, residents, and non‐scholars find challenging to download and engage.…”

The impact of weather extremes on urban resilience to hydro-climate hazards: a Singapore case study

“…place attachment and extent of preparedness and emergency response skills) is critical for developing disaster resilience in rural areas (e.g. Cutter, Ash, & Emrich, 2016). While access to economic resources is important in building resilience in cities, there are other factors to consider when maximizing urban resilience to hazards.…”