Assessing the Resilience of the Rural Settlements against the Risk of Flooding in the Villages of the Nekarud Basin

Natural disasters is one of the main challenges for developing countries, which not only cause death and emotional pain and suffering of survivors, but greatly affecting development. Reduction programs and prevention of disasters, including policies that countries to increase community capacity in disaster, are followed to improve the effects of these disasters. One of the risks that affect Iran, is flooding. Iran has a very high risk of flooding, which in most years, about 70% of annual credit plan is paied to reduce the effects of natural disasters. Floods in recent years has left a lot of damage in many parts of Iran. Because the flood event and can not be prevented, but we can assess the resiliency and vulnerability of risks to reduce the effects of flooding greatly. Planning in disaster management process can reduce the risks of accidents and improve the resilience. Thus, how and by what means we can increase the capacity of society to accept a certain level of risk is very important. In recent years, many researches, focused over concept of resilience and disaster risk reduction policy. This research study area is the Nekarud basin in Mazandaran province. Population growth and unethical uses of Nekarud and natural resources, humans and their facilities, infrastructure and natural resources of the basin are vulnerable. The aim of this study was to evaluate the resiliency and identify strengths and weaknesses in the flood affected villages Nekarud margin is based on random sampling of villages (8 villages) have been affected by floods in recent years, were selected. The research method is descriptive and analytical study of its nature. The aforementioned villages to assess the resilience, the four dimensions of economic, social, and institutional infrastructure based on the location of the axis (DROP) provided by Cutter and his colleagues in 2008, was used. According to the surveys and the results obtained, it can be stated that the model DROP, because of the location-based (geographic), and the integrity of the elections aspects and indicators to measure and assess the resilience of settlements is a good model. The dimensions considered to measure resilience include: economic, social, institutional and infrastructure. After determining the dimensions required components and indicators research, scientific references were identified by the study, questionnaires were prepared. Secondly, the need of the rural sample in the form of a questionnaire, collected and analyzed after coding in SPSS. The findings of the study showed that the settlements are in a different situation in terms of resilience in different dimensions. The economic resilience for the total sample is 8.96. The amount of this variable for Zarandin-e Olya, Zarandin-e Sofla, Abelo and Kuhsarkadeh rural settlements is higher than the average whole.