Measurement and sociological assessment of the resilience of Varamin city versus climate change

Over the last decades, urbanization developmenting and weakness in accurate and comprehensive planning to develop and rapid population growth have caused many challenges for cities. Urban sprawl beginning in the developed countries around 1950 is currently experienced in almost all countries. Many studies on the effects of urban sprawl indicate the emergence of harmful effects of this phenomenon. One of the most important environmental effects is the changes in climate. Most urban settlements are prone to future shocks and tensions due to climate changes, lack of energy and global population growth. Urban managers and planners’ responses to these shocks and what cities should do to adapt to accidents and dangers are now discussed in “resilient cities” topic. Many cities have not yet addressed climate risks due to lack of relevant city policies and action plans, outmoded regulations on urban planning, lack of capacity to respond to climate disasters, and lack of public awareness. The Urban Climate Resilience practice area represents the intersection between WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities and World Resources Institute’s Climate Resilience Practice. The urbanization trends in Iran during last decades had been accelerated by high rate of rural-urban migration along with rapid socio-economic and political changes that formed unbalanced urban growth in Iran. Since resilience refers to the ability of a system to return to its natural conditions after an accident, the purpose of the present study is to test and evaluate the level of resilience of Varamin City in the face of climate changes from its citizens’ viewpoint. Materials and

In the present research, two types of data have been used. The first type of data includes the climate components gathering the Varamin weather station (annual average rainfall, temperature, etc.). The second set corresponds to components relevant to urban sprawl, among which, urban area, population density and urban population. These parameters were obtained by questionnaires which have been filled out by varamin citizens. This descriptive analytical study was conducted with the participation of 393 citizens of Varamin City. The research tool used for data collection was a 35-item researcher-made questionnaire based on previous studies containing the appropriate items to test each of the components. To conform to the research population, the questionnaire was investigated and reviewed by professors and experts in multiple steps and its face validity and content validity were confirmed. In order to assess the reliability of the questionnaires, first, 30 copies of the questionnaire were completed by the citizens of Varamin in a preliminary research. The obtained information entered SPSS 21 and each response was assigned a score of 0-5. After the analysis, the reliability of the questionnaire was estimated by Cronbach’s alpha to be 0.89 that was designed based on the environmental, socio-economic, infrastructure, and institutional components. Analysis and prioritization of the descriptive and inferential analytical statistics the resilience of each of the components and their indices were calculated by SPSS 21 using the one sample T-test and then they were prioritized by Friedman test.

Today, the relationships between human societies and their natural environment has been strongly affected by urbanization and urban development. Cities can be considered as ecological units and studied within the framework of a data-retrieval system. That is, to meet various needs of citizens, the city needs inevitable to provide massive data in key inputs, the most important of which are energy, food and water. Results of measuring resilience of Varamin City with an emphasis on climatic aspects showed that from the citizens’ viewpoint, the resilience was 2.15, which was lower than the desirable average level. It indicates that the citizens consider Varamin vulnerable to climate hazards. Results of investigating resilience components of Varamin City showed that the environmental component and its indices were lower than the average level and according to the citizens intensified drought and changes in temperature have the most negative effects on the environmental condition of resilience in Varamin City. Moreover, according to the citizens, Varamin City is vulnerable to the increase in temperature and drought and these two indices need to be taken into consideration to increase the urban resilience. Although, they believed that the socio-economic and infrastructure components had higher resilience levels compared to the environmental and institutional ones. The socioeconomic component and most of its indices were above the average level and according to the citizens, helping the citizens in case of critical situations and kinship are most significant in the socioeconomic resilience of Varamin City when faced with climate changes. Results of investigating the infrastructural component showed that this component and most of its indices were lower than the average level. Therefore, it can be stated that this city is not in a good condition in infrastructural aspect and is vulnerable in this regard. Furthermore, according to the citizens, the index of “access to health centers” was the most significant infrastructural index. Investigation of the resilience level of the institutional component, it was found that all the indices of the institutional component were lower than the average and the scores of Friedman Test showed that from the citizens’ viewpoint, the municipal services in creating green space and satisfaction from the performance of the organizations in charge of informing to face hazards had the highest significance in the institutional resilience of Varamin City. Although apart from the socioeconomic components, other components in the present study were lower than the average level, since the environmental and institutional components were the least resilient components, respectively, strengthening them should be placed in the priorities of the urban development plans of Varamin City.

Since climate change and its effects are increasing more than before in human societies, especially in urban communities, investigation of the indices ad components of resilience and evaluating them when urban communities face future climate crises and preventive measures are very effective and essential. Furthermore, the increase of the general knowledge regarding the climate changes motivates people to investigate the effects of this issue even more. Therefore, the serious cooperation of the government, local entities, educational organizations, municipal and media in increasing the citizens’ awareness will make the citizens respond significantly to reduce and adapt with the consequences of climate changes through citizen participation.