World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Community Health Services, School of Nursing, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hum, Hong Kong, China.
Department of Applied Social Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hum, Hong Kong, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Feb 9;18(4):1649. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18041649.
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.
与城市社区相比，农村社区通常更容易受到自然灾害的影响。此外，农村社区在地理位置、人口、农业生产和文化方面存在多样性和独特性，这使得不同的农村地区在应对灾害方面面临挑战。对于不同地理地貌的农村社区的个体灾害准备情况，几乎没有进行过比较。在这项研究中，我们通过在中国西北地区进行的横断面自我报告结构问卷调查，检查了三个具有不同地貌（平原、黄土高原和山区）的洪涝灾害频发村庄的农村居民的个体灾害准备情况。我们还采用生态框架来检验不同维度上村民个体灾害准备的决定因素：地点、个体社会人口因素、家庭社会经济地位、灾害适应、社区和邻里影响。我们发现，在控制个体社会人口和家庭社会经济因素后，地点是灾害准备的一个重要因素。平原地区的准备水平高于山区和高原地区。此外，外出务工的村民报告的灾害准备水平高于当地村民。此外，社区和邻里在决定个体灾害准备方面发挥着重要作用。这项研究强调了需要制定基于社区的有针对性的灾害风险减少计划，以提高村民的灾害准备知识和技能。
