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The efficacy of the community response to flood hazards is closely intertwined with its social capital. Communities with high social capital (robust social networks and cohesive community bonds) are likely to have greater abilities in preparing for and dealing with flood hazards. Numerous studies have continuously emphasized the fundamental significance of social capital throughout all stages of disaster risk management. It is still not fully understood how social capital effectively conveys risks. The present study sought to look at the experiences of rural communities in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, with the specific objective of exploring the role of social capital in facilitating the comprehension and dissemination of risk alerts about flood hazards. This study used a comprehensive qualitative methodology, specifically semi-structured interviews, to investigate the local communities' perspectives and use of social capital or networks in the context of risk communication. A total of 48 participants, encompassing a range of backgrounds, including social workers, community leaders, and elders, were engaged in face-to-face interviews. The data that was gathered were then grouped according to specific themes. The researchers utilized the interpretive analysis approach to understand better how the participants interpreted and comprehended the situation within the larger social and institutional framework. The research findings revealed four primary themes: the interpretation and dissemination of risk messages through social networks, the role of community social service connections in accessing social capital and risk information, the negative consequences of social capital maldistribution, and the limitations of social connectedness. The study's results revealed that many individuals impacted by flood hazard's lack access to strong social networks, which may hinder their capacity to obtain and understand information regarding potential risks. The efficient use of hazard alerts, customized to accommodate varied groups' unique interactive and cultural requirements, requires a collaborative and inclusive approach involving several stakeholders, including community people. Implementing this method is paramount in addressing and reducing socioeconomic inequalities within the natural hazards and disaster preparedness framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of natural hazards on nations and societies is a global challenge and concern. Worldwide, studies have been conducted within and between countries, to examine the spatial distribution and temporal evolution of fatalities and their impact on societies. In Brazil, no studies have comprehensively identified the fatalities associated with all natural hazards and their specificities by decade, region, sex, age, and other victim characteristics. This study carries out an in-depth analysis of the Brazilian Mortality Data of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, from 1979 to 2019, identifying the natural hazards that kill the most people in Brazil and their particularities. Lightning is the deadliest natural hazard in Brazil during this period, with a gradual decrease in the number of fatalities. The number of hydro-meteorological fatalities increases from 2000 onwards, with the highest number of fatalities occurring between 2010 and 2019. Although Brazil is a tropical country affected by severe droughts, extreme heat has the lowest number of fatalities compared to other natural hazards. The period from December to March has a higher number of fatalities, and the southeast is the most populous region where most people die. The number of male victims is twice as high as the number of female victims, across all ages groups, and unmarried victims are the most likely to die. It is therefore essential to recognize and disseminate the knowledge about the impact of different natural hazards on communities and societies, namely on people and their livelihoods, in order to assess the challenges and identify opportunities for reducing the effects of natural hazards in Brazil. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The haor region of Bangladesh is exposed to a variety of natural hazards such as flash floods, seasonal floods, droughts, riverbank erosion, embankment breach due to climate change, which impacts the haor people's lives and livelihoods. Haor households are attempting to diversify their livelihood activities to protect themselves from such extreme climate events. The study's aim to evaluate the various livelihood strategies adopted by haor households, and multinomial logistic regression is employed to identify the factors influencing their decision to pursue more eco-friendly and sustainable livelihood strategies. A multi-stage stratified random sampling technique was used to collect primary data from 300 haor households in Kishoreganj, Netrokona, and Sunamganj districts, with 100 from each district. We provide inimitable insight into the analysis to understand how livelihood resources, livelihood strategies, and livelihood outcomes are closely tied in the framework for sustainable rural livelihoods. The study classified a household's economic activities into five distinct categories, together with crop farming. Among the livelihood options, crop plus livestock rearing is the most productive livelihood strategy for haor households. The findings revealed that the household's head age and education, dependency ratio, land holdings, household assets value, access to credit, annual income, membership of any organization, home to road, market, and haor distances, communication during the dry season, duration of waterlogged, and agro-ecology of the haor ecosystem all have a significant impact on the choice of higher returning livelihood diversification strategies. Policies should attempt to promote the significant determinants of livelihood strategies choice, as well as should ensure livelihood assets, a strong infrastructure, and minimize natural hazards, in order to transform the local context and enable poor households to build more profitable livelihood strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk and resilience assessments have been both widely, but separately, used as tools for guiding policymakers to formulate disaster-risk reduction policies. On the one hand, risk assessment is utilized to estimate the risk associated with disasters in terms of operational metrics such as monetary or casualties' loss; on the other hand, most resilience analysis assesses and represent community resilience as an index, without a specific unit metric, to gauge levels of disparity in community's post-disaster recovery capability among the areas of interest. Although disaster-risk reduction policies should be best informed by both risk and resilience assessments, an informative integrated assessment approach accounting for both seems to be lacked in current research, insofar as the difficulty in properly integrating their distinct measurement metrics. This paper commences with a literature review of risk assessment and community resilience. It then proposes an integrated framework that can comprehensively assess both seismic risk and resilience, by taking into account the casualties and economic losses associated with earthquakes resulted from a risk assessment, and the infrastructure-system resilience and community socioeconomic–demographic resilience resulted from a resilience assessment. More specifically, an integrated tool, risk-based resilience-concentration curve, is proposed for assessing the inequality of given types of risk in the community's infrastructure-system resilience, and socioeconomic–demographic resilience, respectively. A case study is presented using the data from a city in Israel: the first phase of the case study focused on the concentration of casualties' risk in community's infrastructure-system resilience, and the second on the concentration of economic risk in community's socioeconomic–demographic resilience. The results show that unevenly distributed risk and community resilience can cause inequality of risk in resilience capacity in certain administrative tracts of the city. Based on these findings, the paper recommends a range of risk-reduction strategies for different administrative tracts based on their risk-based resilience concentration curves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the methodology developed by the Mexican National Disaster Prevention Centre (CENAPRED), we assessed the housing's structural risk to earthquakes and floods of the town of Motozintla, Chiapas, Mexico. Structural vulnerability was estimated by characterizing the local housing's construction and by randomly and statistically selecting the surveyed houses. We assessed risk by superposing the vulnerability geographical information system (GIS) layer over the seismic microzonation and flood scenarios GIS layers previously generated for Motozintla. Our results indicate that in general, this community has high structural vulnerability and risk levels to the two analyzed natural hazards. Very high seismic structural vulnerability is concentrated mainly along the northeastern and western sides of the local Xelaju Grande River. Another major finding is that in the worst flood case scenario (precipitation of 528 mm/h with flood depth > 125 cm) more than 44% of the houses in Motozintla will be severely damaged. Risk increases due to the prevalent precarious housing conditions. The results of this research will allow local authorities to strength their civil protection plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islands are known to be vulnerable to natural hazards, resulting in substantial risks for their tourism industries. To facilitate the systematic analysis of the underlying vulnerability drivers, a tourism disaster vulnerability framework was developed. The conceptual model then guided qualitative empirical research in three regions: the Caribbean, the South Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. The results from 73 interviews highlight common, as well as idiosyncratic, factors that shape the islands' hazardscapes and vulnerabilities. Key vulnerabilities included social, economic, political, and environmental dimensions. Probably, the most critical vulnerability driver is the lack of private sector investment in disaster risk reduction. This is interrelated with deficient planning processes, on-going demand for coastal products, lack of political will, and poor environmental conditions. Notwithstanding many barriers, some businesses and organisations engage proactively in addressing disaster risk. The paper's empirical evidence supports the validity of the framework, and suggestions for further research are made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]