Government support, social capital and adaptation to urban flooding by residents in the Pearl River Delta area, China

Abstract

Increasingly extreme weather events have resulted in massive socioeconomic losses and spark great interest in minimizing the impact of such events in the context of climate change. This paper analyses data from a large-scale household survey conducted in 20 cities in the Pearl River Delta area of China to examine how government support and social capital influence urban residents' adaptations to mitigate the effects of urban flooding. The results show that more than 90% of residents would take engineering or non-engineering measures to protect their private assets against flooding. The most popular measures are moving away their valuable goods and reducing travel during flooding. Government support, such as releasing early warning information, post-disaster services, technical assistance, financial assistance and physical support could significantly improve residents' adoption of adaptation measures. Social capital, operationalized as having a local Hukou (citizenship) in the area where one works, is closely associated with adaptation capacity, whereas a blood relative network has no evident influence on their adaptation behaviours. In addition, household and local community characteristic have positive influence on residents' adaptations. In summary, government support and community activities are most significant factors influencing residents' adaptation to mitigate the impacts of urban flooding but are in great demand in the Pearl River Delta areas.

Dynamic of Regional Planning and Sustainable Development in the Pearl River Delta, China

“…Second, there is inadequate public participation in the top-down plan making process. Public participation helps to ensure the legitimacy of urban planning in western planning systems; however, in a totally different context in China, the legitimacy of planning has been ensured by public ownership and state control, which results in large gaps between the resident's needs and government's support [77,83].…”

“…The local community is the basic organization to organize residents to take adaptation measures. However, local communities are loose and inefficient at organization in the PRD area [83]. Thus, a collaborative workshop model composed by government, public, planners and social groups has been raised recently.…”

Estimation of Economic Costs of Flood Impacts of Typhoon “Crising” in Kabacan, North Cotabato, Philippines

“…Therefore, the total government expenditures during the flood events reached to Php1,364,440.00. This is not supposedly limited to giving relief goods during the events of flooding, but government might provide an early warning system and advise on mitigation and technical support on emergency response, training as well as early dissemination of warning but government support to community activities significantly influence community's adaptation in mitigating the impact of flooding [10]. These could help the government minimize the impact of flooding.…”

Urban hydrography and Bluespots map of Craiova (Romania)

“…The effects of urbanization in the urban hydrological processes are visible through the change of the surfaces that cover the city area (Yamashita, Watanabe, & Shimatani, 2016) and the accelerating runoff flow velocity ( Weng, 2001;Li & Wang, 2009) thus increasing the urban flood risks (Chen, Zhou, Zhang, Du, & Zhou, 2015;Mahmoud & Gan, 2018). The global climate change induced a growth in the frequency and intensity of extreme events, such as extreme precipitation that combined with urbanization and land use change will cause even more severe floods and damage to urban areas in the near future ( Liang et al, 2017;Jamali et al, 2018;Zare & Talebbeydokhti, 2018). Since floods have the potential to cause major losses, it is important to identify areas exposed to floods (Oubennaceur, Chokmani, Nastev, Lhissou, & Elalem, 2018) and include them in local strategies for flood prevention that should comprise Correspondence to: alba_claudia@yahoo.com measures such as constructions of river dikes, flood forecasting and warning, hazard and risk maps, etc.…”