Flooding in semi-unformal urban areas in North Africa: Environmental and psychosocial drivers.
Urban flooding is recognized as a nature-driven disaster shaped by inherent factors such as climate, morphology, and hydrology, affecting vulnerability and flood exposure. While these factors play a paramount role, significant psychosocial intricate drivers are acknowledged, though they are challenging for prediction and assessment. This study delves into these drivers in a specific context, aiming to draw conclusions that extend beyond. It undertakes a comprehensive approach, integrating cloud-based Radar flood detection, analysis of flood causation patterns, and geostatistical analysis of a social survey based on cross-synthesis, contingency analysis, and structural equation modeling. In particular, we characterize the case of the coastal city of Tetouan in Morocco, which is representative in its environmental and socioeconomic settings to most cities in North Africa. It unraveled the nuanced interplay of psychosocial, economic, and territorial dynamics influencing flood exposure. The findings reveal how watershed location molds unique environmental exposures, steering nuanced, emotional, and behavioral responses among residents. Gender and education differentials reveal diverse perceptions and awareness of flood risks. Psychosocial intricacies come to the forefront, portraying education, income, and awareness as crucial mediators influencing cognitive and affective responses. Elevated education, increased income, and heightened awareness correlate with heightened perception and coping strategies. Findings reveal that risk perception significantly and differently influences risk acceptance, coping, and aversion through an array of identified key factors influencing coping strategies, mediating elements in flood damage relationships, and underscoring the pivotal role of perception in shaping responses to risk. Moreover, it found that lower risk acceptance leads to higher coping and aversion, and the latter positively affects coping, indicating that acceptance reduces the motivation to avoid the risk and decreases the willingness to adopt coping strategies to reduce the exposure. The outcomes carry critical implications for comprehending individual and collective social behaviors, informing strategies, and mitigating flood risk that apply at a wider context. It accentuates the inadequacy of relying solely on structural engineering for risk management, citing spatial constraints, misinformation, and lapses in prior-risk memory as compounding exposure challenges. This recognition catalyzes action, advocating tailored awareness campaigns, educational initiatives, and capacity-building programs, spotlighting the need for heightened individual profiles to enhance social understanding, engagement, and resilience. We anticipate profound insights, fostering a richer comprehension of urban flooding complexities and informing adaptive strategies on a broader scale.
Salhi A
,Larifi I
,Salhi H
,Heggy E
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A hybrid method for evaluating the resilience of urban road traffic network under flood disaster: An example of Nanjing, China.
Urban road traffic network (URTN) plays an important role in city operation, while it is also suffered a lot from the urban flood disasters which caused negative impacts frequently, like traffic congestion, and road collapse. The function loss of URTN not only destroy normal urban life and work order, but also pose a serious threat to people's lives and properties. Therefore, it is urgent to quantitatively explore the flood resilience of URTN. The concept of resilience puts forward new ideas to help solve the problem of urban flooding disasters from a holistic view. Exploring the flood resilience of urban traffic network may help to mitigate urban flooding and improve the urban resilience. This paper developed a flood resilience evaluation model of URTN, which contains 26 indicators based on the 4R theory. A case study was conducted in southern China to validate the model with real data. It evaluated the urban flood resilience of road traffic network with a comparison of before and after reconstruction of the pipeline. The results demonstrated that the flood resilience of URTN is at a relatively low level in the study area, and the limitation of single traditional engineering measure to the flood resilience of URTN. Suggestions such as strengthening the citizen participation and enhancing the complementary capability of multiple engineering measures are proposed to further promote the flood resilience of the URTN.
Li D
,Zhu X
,Huang G
,Feng H
,Zhu S
,Li X
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