Enhancing post-disaster resilience by ‘building back greener’: Evaluating the contribution of nature-based solutions to recovery planning in Futaba County, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Mabon, Leslie

doi:10.1016/j.landurbplan.2019.03.013

Cited by 54 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 43 publications

(52 reference statements)

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“…Urban and peri-urban natural areas have been shown to be important in ‘normal’ times [ 57 , 58 ] and in times of crisis [ 20 , 21 ] and upheaval [ 22 ]. The popular press has touted the importance of outdoor space and nature in these globally stressful times [e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As millions of Americans lost their jobs and were pushed into food insecurity, some relied on their urban greenspaces to provide sustenance and a mental escape from the stressful times [ 20 ]. Following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Futaba County, Japan, city officials have made it a point to rebuild key green spaces that provide cultural ecosystems services crucial to the recovery of locals [ 21 ]. These green spaces are crucial to providing a sense of pride and identity for residents as they recover from this disaster [ 21 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Following the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster in Futaba County, Japan, city officials have made it a point to rebuild key green spaces that provide cultural ecosystems services crucial to the recovery of locals [ 21 ]. These green spaces are crucial to providing a sense of pride and identity for residents as they recover from this disaster [ 21 ]. A systematic literature review also uncovered how interactions with ecosystems and the cultural services they provide are greatly beneficial for refugee populations as they recover from the physical and emotional upheaval during resettlement [ 22 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The importance of urban natural areas and urban ecosystem services during the COVID-19 pandemic

et al. 2020

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Urban, peri-urban forests and other natural areas provide a wide range of material and non-material benefits to people known as ecosystem services. Access to these areas has been linked to benefits for physical and mental health of local populations. In the spring of 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic forced many governments to impose a set of restrictions including the closure of businesses, cancelation of public events and schooling, social distancing, limitations on the size of social gatherings, and travel restrictions. During this period of restrictions, we conducted a study assessing the importance of urban and peri-urban forests and other natural areas to people living in and around the city of Burlington, Vermont, USA. We evaluated the self-reported use and changes in personal importance related to these natural areas before and during the period of restrictions. We received over 400 responses to our field survey. The results show that 69.0% of the respondents had increased or greatly increased their visitation rate to our natural areas and urban forests, and 80.6% of respondents considered that the importance of these areas, and access to them, either increased or greatly increased. Moreover 25.8% of the sample had either never, or very rarely accessed their local natural areas before the pandemic, but 69.2% of the first time or infrequent visitors reported that having access to these areas during COVID-19 as ‘very important’. People reported that these areas were important for a wide range of activities from exercise to birding, but also reported values related to reducing stress in a time of global chaos. Our results indicate the increasing demand and value of such areas in times of crisis such as COVID-19. Experts in zoonotic disease predict the potential for more frequent pandemic events, thus predicating the importance for continued funding for, maintenance of, and improved access to, natural areas to our largely urban civilization.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The importance of urban natural areas and urban ecosystem services during the COVID-19 pandemic

et al. 2020

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“…They concluded that while the hard defenses in China provide 3.18 million per km on average for TC-related protection, coastal wetlands outweigh these hard defenses as they are more cost-effective. Similarly, adopting natural solutions to risk mitigation has been recognized as a progressive way-out globally (Temmerman et al, 2013;Sajjad et al, 2018;Mabon, 2019). Hence, adopting nature-based urban development or hybrid approaches (integrated natural and engineered) in Hong Kong should be explored and considered to cope with the increasing damages from TCs rather engineering-based defenses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tropical Cyclone Impacts on Cities: A Case of Hong Kong

Sajjad

Chan

2020

Front. Built Environ.

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The Pearl River Delta region in South China is known as a significant hotspot of tropical cyclone (TC) risk, which calls for an in-depth evaluation of TC damages and its determinants to support mitigation of associated impacts (e.g., loss of lives and infrastructure, and economic damages). Hence, in the context of TCs and cities, this study examines the historical impacts of TCs in Hong Kong and evaluates the association between economic losses and different TC hazards/parameters (i.e., wind, rainfall, and storm surge). An analysis of the reported TC-caused damages during 1988-2018 suggests a strong positive relationship between the normalized economic damages (Damage/GDP) and TC rainfall (p < 0.001, R 2 = 0.43). This relationship for TC wind (explained by the power dissipation index-PDI) is positively statistically significant (>90% confidence) but insignificant for TC-induced storm surge. These results ascertain that among all three TC hazards, rainfall is the most significant factor for economic losses in Hong Kong followed by the PDI. However, it is further found that TC rainfall has significantly decreased (p < 0.01), while PDI has increased (93% confidence) during 1988-2018. Hence, it is obvious that the increasing economic losses in Hong Kong cannot be associated with TC rainfall intensification as it has decreased while the damages are still increasing. The increasing PDI, population rise over the past few decades and growing number of buildings in Hong Kong to accommodate this population are likely the major reasons behind these increasing damages. However, further in-depth evaluations are recommended in this regard to improve our understanding regarding tropical cyclones and cities. This study further calls for such evaluations in other coastal cities to identify the city-specific significant determinants of TC-related damages in the context of supporting damage mitigation in the future.

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“…Meanwhile, the green belt can effectively prevent road surface water and further reduce the economic losses caused by storm surge disasters. So, the green plant plays a vital role in social, ecological, and economic recovery after disasters such as hurricanes [ 40 , 41 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Data Augmentation-Based Evaluation System for Regional Direct Economic Losses of Storm Surge Disasters

Sun

Wang

2021

IJERPH

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The accurate prediction of storm surge disasters’ direct economic losses plays a positive role in providing critical support for disaster prevention decision-making and management. Previous researches on storm surge disaster loss assessment did not pay much attention to the overfitting phenomenon caused by the data scarcity and the excessive model complexity. To solve these problems, this paper puts forward a new evaluation system for forecasting the regional direct economic loss of storm surge disasters, consisting of three parts. First of all, a comprehensive assessment index system was established by considering the storm surge disasters’ formation mechanism and the corresponding risk management theory. Secondly, a novel data augmentation technique, k-nearest neighbor-Gaussian noise (KNN-GN), was presented to overcome data scarcity. Thirdly, an ensemble learning algorithm XGBoost as a regression model was utilized to optimize the results and produce the final forecasting results. To verify the best-combined model, KNN-GN-based XGBoost, we conducted cross-contrast experiments with several data augmentation techniques and some widely-used ensemble learning models. Meanwhile, the traditional prediction models are used as baselines to the optimized forecasting system. The experimental results show that the KNN-GN-based XGBoost model provides more precise predictions than the traditional models, with a 64.1% average improvement in the mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) measurement. It could be noted that the proposed evaluation system can be extended and applied to the geography-related field as well.

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Enhancing post-disaster resilience by ‘building back greener’: Evaluating the contribution of nature-based solutions to recovery planning in Futaba County, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan

Cited by 54 publications

References 43 publications

The importance of urban natural areas and urban ecosystem services during the COVID-19 pandemic

The importance of urban natural areas and urban ecosystem services during the COVID-19 pandemic

Tropical Cyclone Impacts on Cities: A Case of Hong Kong

A Data Augmentation-Based Evaluation System for Regional Direct Economic Losses of Storm Surge Disasters

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