The Assessment of Factors Influential in the Social Resilienceof Rural Settelments in Disasters

Natural hazards, like earthquake and floods, have often resulted in sever financial impact and human losses in the country. Current arrangements in disaster management of the country, however, have presented a passive approach towards disaster management or adopt appraoches that are focused on the built environment. This research seeks to develop a model for assessing the social resilience of human settlements and local communities in dealing with risks and potential shocks. In order to test the model, social resilience in five rural settlements of the Eghbal Gharbi region of Qazvin are assessed.
As the first step, the authors investigate the concept of resilience and the place of social factors in the social development of rural settlements and their role in the resilience of these settlements in regards to disasters. A set of indicators is extracted from the literature for measuring social resilience in rural settlements. In the second step, a model for analyzing social resilience is developed. On this bases, data on spatial and non-spatial data is collected by using questionnaire and field observation. Non-spatial data is obtained through structured questionnaire designed on the Likert scale in regards to 21 socio-economic and cultural indicators. As the final step, using inferential statistical tests and analytical methods and employing spatial analysis tools, social resilience in 5 selected village in West Eghbal in Qazvin province is measured.
The research findings suggest a low level of social resilience in the surveyed rural settlements in Qazvin province. No significant difference was found between the studied rural settlements in terms of social resilience.The level of social resilience in total is calculated 43% in the selected villages. The correlation analysis on different dimensions of social resilience indicate a relatively high correlation between inner dominant indicators. Furthermore, in analysing internal consistency and correlation coefficient for resilience, a high level of correlation was found between social resilience and all dimensions of resilience.
To conclude, based on the results of this research the level of social resilience considering its different dimensions has never been ideal in the surveyed rural settlements. On this basis and in the case of a future disaster, these rural settlements will face serious challenges regarding social dimensions of resilience.