Research on the disaster coping capability of a historical village in a mountainous area of China: case study in Shangli, Sichuan

Abstract

Most valuable historical villages in Southwest China are located within remote mountainous areas, not only facing a high risk of unexpected natural disasters, but also threatened by isolation, fire, and blocked situations that may occur during emergencies, due to vulnerable spatial connections, high density wooden buildings, compact village structure, and so on. Since public emergency services cannot cover all affected areas immediately after disaster, disaster coping capability of a village community is noticeably important. This study focused on the disaster coping capability of a historical village within a mountainous area. Based on previous studies, this paper listed the necessary components of disaster coping capability, while considering the social and organizational features of a community in China. Accordingly, this paper investigated the case of the historical village Shangli regarding three topics: disaster awareness, potential capability, and practical capability. The conclusions are as follows. First, local inhabitants had insufficient cognition of risk and emergency response, while a deficiency in the potential of public cooperation was also observed. Second, under the conventional top-down administration method, local inhabitants were prone to rely on the government, leaving an obvious gap between their high perception of the community and the actual inactive situation that shows that, although there was great potential, the community had not yet been motivated to become cohesive. Third, practical disaster countermeasures were still at the primary stages without a systematic plan for disaster risk reduction. However, they had started with rough arrangement concerning basic emergency issues.