Spatial and temporal evolution of community resilience to natural hazards in the coastal areas of China

With the accelerating progress of industrialization, urbanization and population growth in recent decades, community resilience, the ability of communities to function effectively and recover successfully in the aftermath of disasters and shocks, has received great attentions. A number of studies had been conducted focusing on community resilience. This article applied community resilience framework to the coastal areas of China, which are the most densely populated and economically developed areas in China with the most frequent marine disasters. City-level social and economic data were used to construct a community resilience index (CRI). Using factor analysis and the global principal component analysis method, 55 city-level indexes were reduced into 15 factors that explain 73.99% of the variance. Getis-Ord G* Statistics were used to depict the high-value clusters and low-value clusters of the CRI. Clearly identified spatial and temporal variations of the CRI showed that both the overall level and regional differences of the CRI increased from 2003 to 2013; the overall spatial agglomeration characteristic of community resilience was not significant. Our findings also highlighted the key elements to improving community resilience: a robust and developed economic system; excellent education programs and training to improve consciousness on disaster prevention and mitigation; adequate investment on critical infrastructure, especially transportation and communication; proper environmental policies to protect ecosystems and water rouses; and extra attention and disaster risk budgets for vulnerable populations.