ABSTRACT
In the face of the first wave of COVID-19 contagion, citizens all over the world experienced concerns for their safety and health, as well as prolonged lockdowns - which brought about limitations but also unforeseen opportunities for personal growth. Broad variability in these psychological responses to such unprecedented experiences emerged. This study addresses this variability by investigating the role of personal and community resilience. Personal resilience, collective resilience, community disaster management ability, provided information by local authorities, and citizens' focus on COVID-19-related personal concerns and lockdown-related opportunities for personal growth were detected through an online questionnaire. Multilevel modelling was run with data from 3,745 Italian citizens. The potential of personal resilience as a driver for individuals to overcome adverse situations with positive outcomes was confirmed. Differently, the components of community resilience showed more complex paths, highlighting the need to pay more attention to its role in the face of far-reaching adverse events which hardly test individuals' as well as communities' adaptability and agency skills. The complexities linked to the multi-component and system-specific nature of resilience, as well as potential paths towards making the most out of citizens' and communities' ones, emerge. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
ABSTRACT
Abnormal weather caused by global warming has brought about unprecedented torrential rain, causing heavy rain disasters in various parts of Japan. Since recent river flooding caused inundation damage over a wide area, area-wide evacuation, that is, evacuation to a safe place beyond municipalities' boundaries is necessary to save lives. This paper first introduces the community disaster management planning system that was established in Japan in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Next, the necessity of wide-area evacuation that has become apparent due to the recent flooding of large-scale rivers and a few problems that have arisen in the government-led wide-area evacuation plan are introduced, because residents' concrete evacuation behaviour was not sufficiently reflected. The author discusses efforts of a community in the Kofu basin, Yamanashi Prefecture which has been working to formulate a community disaster management plan for wide-area evacuation and city and prefectural efforts that support this district. The author also describes the risk communication that was undertaken to clarify the role of central ministries, local governments and community residents in the formulation of wide-area evacuation plans. Finally in wide-area evacuation drills, planned and conducted by the community in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the community disaster management plan is further reviewed. In this article, the author addresses how such a community-led wide-area evacuation plan is indispensable for administrations' effective wide-area evacuation planning. © 2021 WIT Press.