The Measurement of Environmental Resilience of Villages against Earthquake Hazard (Case Study: Mojezat Dehestan in Zanjan County)

Abstract

Extended abstract 1. INTRODUCTION Disasters do not affect all members of a society equally. Disaster scholars, and to a less extent the general public, have acknowledged that disasters do not indiscriminately distribute risk. Indeed, disasters are the products of the social, political, and economical environment, as well as the natural events that cause them. In the last three decades, two geophysical hazards, Haiti earthquake in 2010, and the Indonesian earthquake and tsunami in 2004 have caused the highest death toll from natural disasters. Natural disasters such as floods and earthquake in geographical areas, especially in rural areas often have undesired adverse effects. Natural disasters had mostly endangered health of residents, especially children and the elderly by destroying the sources of income and living facilities, and had always been a serious threat to development, especially in developing countries. This subject reminds the necessity of attention to resilience at the local level (village); because, local resilience believes that resiliency almost depends on properties and action in microscale. Local resiliency based on events means that local community is able to stand against extreme natural events without damages like destructive losses and damages or loss of production of power or quality of life. 2. THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK The relationship between a society's sustainability of resiliency and risks includes many social, economic, political and complex physical factors. There are three common models for studying resilience: mitigation model, recovery model, and structural-cognitive model. 3. METHOLOGY In this research, the sampling method has two steps. In the first step, due to vulnerability of villages against the earthquake, among twenty-four villages in the study area, eleven villages with more than 20 households were selected as the sample of study. Because these villages are near to the faults, they are more in danger of earthquakes. Therefore, sampling was performed in eleven selected villages. These villages have a population of 6413 people. Since the exact number of people in a society cannot be calculated due to time and cost restrictions, the sample size was calculated using Cochran's formula, which includes 362 people. To evaluate resiliency in villages, independent samples t test, Pearson correlation coefficient, Friedman ANOVA, and Prometheus techniques as well as Electra 1 have been used. 4. DISCUSSION The analysis and increase of resilience of natural disasters has become an important and extensive field in a way that currently the issue is shifting from analyzing the movement of the mutual sustainable development and disaster management towards increasing resilience. Accordingly, the analysis and increase of the resilience of human and environmental systems against natural disasters is moving towards achieving the goal of sustainable development which has gained a particular importance. Reviewing literature and previous successful experiences showed that increasing resilience of residents and the resiliency of rural settlements is the best way to reduce the effects of natural disasters. The most important step to increase the resiliency is identification of the amount of rural areas and rural people's resiliency. Therefore, the present study seeks to investigate the status of resiliency in Mojezat district against danger of earthquake so that the economic, social, organizational, and infrastructural resiliency can be studied. 5. CONCLU#SION The results showed that among the various aspects studied, the social dimension has high resiliency and organizational dimension has low resiliency. Because rural people tend to participate in helping the victims, be members of community groups and cooperate with architects. However, villager's due to lack of appropriate institutional context and unsuccessful performance of institutions related to crisis management have been less satisfied with these organizations. This issue led to the fact that the organizational dimension based on independent samples T test becomes fairly good. It is also confirmed by Friedman test. The existence of positive and significant relationship between different dimensions indicates that strengthening one dimension of resiliency can help increasing resiliency in other dimensions. Prometheus technique showed that Doran and Ramin villages, according to the indexes studied in rural areas, had the highest rank. According to the obtained results, the following points can be proposed to increase resiliency: 1-Improving institutional and organizational infrastructure and creating a bilateral relationship between the local organizations and rural people in order to increase people's satisfaction and improve institutional resiliency, especially in Riyhan, Segheltuli and Qynerjhe villages. 2- Increasing participation among individuals, people, and their members of the local groups, especially among the educated class and in Barutaghaji village because of the low average of the social dimension in this village. 3- Improving infrastructure in SeghlTuli and BarotAghaji through development of infrastructure facilities, improving the quality of housing and increasing public services, especially the houses of pastoral class. 4. Paying more attention to Chavarzaq and Riyhan Villages and reducing the vulnerability of these villages, especially in the organizational aspect.