Resilience Study of Rural Areas of Peri-Urbanization against Floods: A Case Study of the some rurals of midanchay village

Flood is one of the natural hazards affecting rural areas around the world. International statistics confirm the fact that, during the last two or three decades, natural hazards like flood has occurred many times compared to the past; it has also caused various harmful effects on rural regions. Due to having a close relationship with natural environment and a limited capacity to confront environmental threats, the rural societies and the related production activities have been exposed to natural destructive forces more than other societies. Since the East Azerbaijan Province is a submergible province in Iran and regarding the several-year experience obtained from the loss of life and property caused by floods, it seems necessary to change the attitudes from “exclusive focus on vulnerability reduction” to “increased resilience” against natural phenomena such as the occurrence of floods. Moreover, because Tabriz city and the surrounded villages have been exposed to the danger of floods from the past, the objective of the present study was to explore and clarify the rate of resilience of rural areas in the southeastern suburbs of Tabriz metropolis against floods.

The present survey was an applied descriptive-analytic research. Data collection was done using library and field studies and relying on a questionnaire distributed among families and Rurals heads. The validity of the questionnaire was determined by using the opinions of the experts in rural and natural disasters, indicators, and components through the collective wisdom of Delphi method; its reliability value was also calculated by Cronbach’s alpha as 0.86. The population included the settlements of 5 villages in the east and southeastern suburbs of Tabriz city. Out of 8554 households in the population, 370 households were selected as the sample of the study according to the Cochran formula. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used to examine variable normality. Regarding the normality of the research variables, the one sample t-test, regression, and one-way ANOVA were used to explore the rate of resilience dimensions (economic, physical, institutional, social, and ecological) in the intended villages. Furthermore, path analysis was used to explore the impact of the five dimensions of resilience (independent variable) on the resilience rate of rural settlements (dependent variable).

The results of the one sample t-test indicated that among the indicators (social, economic, institutional, physical, and ecological), the social (average=3.50), economic (average=3.33), physical (average=3.10), institutional (average=2.54), and ecological (average=1.98) indicators have the highest impact on rural houses, respectively. The results of ANOVA showed that regarding resilience rate against floods, there is a statistically significant different among the villages. The resilience rate against floods is higher in Leili Khan Rural (average=1.548); it is lower in Chavan village (average=1.373). Besides, the average resilience of the villages against floods is 14.7, which is lower compared to the theoretical average (15); the significance level was less than 0.000. Thus, the resilience status is lower than average in the studied villages which is not desirable. Exploring the impact of each resilience indicator on the durability of rural settlements by path analysis revealed that economic status (β coefficient=0.405) and ecological indicator (β coefficient=0.181) are of the highest and lowest share in the durability of rural settlements in southeastern suburbs of Tabriz city against floods.

The results of the analyses show that among resilience dimensions, the social dimension is of the best status and the ecological dimension is of an unfavorable status. Altogether, among the five dimensions (economic, physical, institutional, social, and ecological), the most important factors affecting the resilience of the villages in southeastern suburbs of Tabriz city were identified. The most important items (factors) in the economic, social, institutional, physical, and ecological dimensions were respectively “dependence on a job”, “villagers’ participation in helping flood victims”, “village heads’ planning and tact”, “age of buildings”, and “geographical properties (topographic status, elevation slope, slope, etc.)”. According to the results, the following recommendations are presented. Interaction should be established in order to increase the economic, social, institutional, physical and ecological dimension so as to increase the resilience of Tabriz County. Plans should be set based on the conditions and deficiencies of each village so that they can endure against accidents and hazards. The residents’ awareness of the impact of cultural influence and social relationships on the reduction of vulnerability should be boosted. Moreover, increasing coordination and obliging the crisis management organizations, improving the institutional and organizational contexts, and creating a mutual relationship between local organizations and rural people to increase satisfaction and institutional resilience, especially in the studied villages, are of great importance.