Suchergebnisse

The observation that similar types of natural disasters produce different reactions based on a particular culture and location demands a thorough and detailed analysis, because the reasons are likely to be numerous and complex. Although the economic situation, political organization, and technological infrastructure of communities are fundamental factors, they do not offer a complete explanation of people's behavior in the face of risk and disasters. This article uses a cross-cultural perspective to clarify the relationship between two cultures and their different patterns of response to extreme flood events. The research was carried out in two Western societies, the United States and Italy, both of which have similar socioeconomic characteristics, but distinctly different historical and. cultural traditions. The disasters studied were the Po River Valley floods of November 1994 in northwest Italy and the Mississippi River-Missouri River floods in the U.S. upper Midwest during the summer of 1993. These two extreme floods were analyzed with respect to the pattern of human response during the preparation, rescue, recovery, and reconstruction phases. The study includes both human-response and cross-cultural analyses. A questionnaire was employed to gauge the perception of the flood disasters by the Italian and American disaster managers. The cross-cultural analysis was performed using an etic-emic contrast. The results showed that the different human responses observed in the floods of northwestern Italy and of the United States Midwest were linked to basic differences in four cultural elements: (I) experience with floods, (2) socio-political traditions and organization, (3) level of integration within the community, and (4) perception of the physical environment.

Abstract Community resilience to disaster is a concept that deals with different meanings depending on diverse disciplines and so far more attention has been given to its structural aspects. Only recently the social dimensions have sparked interests and its assessment is still a challenge dealing with the integration of quantitative variables and qualitative judgments. Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) can provide a consistent methodology to deal with this aspect, creating indeed, the background for ranking and evaluating the effect of potential decision and policy strategies aiming to enhance the social resilience. In this work, we proposed a study for defining social resilience through the application of the Promethee method. Five social macro-indicators, characterized by specific sub-indicators, were analyzed in ten Italian case study areas involved in the EU LIFE PRIMES Project. The information for the definition of the sub-indicators were carried out through the delivering of anonymous questionnaires to a sample of citizens in each interested area. The approach provided both a classification of communities in term of social resilience and the individuation of the most important indicators influencing the final ranking. This method can be suggested as an effective tool for studying the various dimensions characterizing social resilience.