Flood risk perceptions and coping capacities among the retired population, with implications for risk communication: A study of residents in a north Wales coastal town, UK

Interpersonal risk communication matters more than media risk communication in its impact on individuals' trust and preventive behaviors during COVID-19

A cross-sectional survey study from 1496 respondents was conducted to investigate how interpersonal risk communication and media risk communication foster individuals' interpersonal trust and trust in scientists during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Findings reveal that interpersonal risk communication is significantly related to interpersonal trust and trust in scientists, but have no direct association with preventive behaviors. Media risk communication is significantly associated with preventive behaviors and increases individuals' trust in scientists while having no effect on interpersonal trust. Preventive behaviors are significantly influenced by both interpersonal trust and trust in scientists. In addition, trust mediated the association between risk communication and preventive behaviors.

Framing Disaster Risk Perception and Vulnerability in Social Media Communication: A Literature Review

The paper presents the results of a literature review on how social media can impact on disaster risk perception and vulnerability and how these two aspects are interconnected, trying to understand what factors have consequences especially on informational vulnerability. The paper answers to the increasing requests at an international level to move from a technocratic approach to disaster risk management and reduction to a holistic one, where social perspective is integrated. The paper states that this change of paradigm is relevant, especially considering the role that new technologies in communication and information systems are acquiring in disaster risk management and reduction. What emerges from the literature review is that there is a limited scientific production on the topic and further works are desired, to improve knowledge on how new communication and information technologies can impact on vulnerability and risk perception. Furthermore, the two topics are usually discussed separately. However, the role that risk perception can have in increasing or reducing vulnerability deserves to be better discussed.

Development and Validation of the Coping Capacity Measurement Scale of Public Health Emergencies in China

Public health emergency coping capacity has been an important direction in crisis research in recent years. The use of the public health emergency coping capacity scale to evaluate the public's response and feelings regarding public health emergencies is one of the essential ways to improve the effectiveness of public health emergency response. Based on literature research, this paper constructed the theoretical dimension of public health emergency coping ability and completed the development of the items of the initial scale in China. After using SPSS 22.0-conducted exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and reliability test, the scale dimensions and items were deleted and optimized. The final public health emergency coping capacity measurement scale in China included 12 items and four dimensions. The results showed that the developed scale has high reliability and validity, which is helpful for the relevant personnel to understand the level of public health emergency coping ability and provides an essential basis for timely and accurate emergency prevention and control interventions.

Flash Flood Events along the West Mediterranean Coasts: Inundations of Urbanized Areas Conditioned by Anthropic Impacts

Flash floods represent one of the natural hazards that causes the greatest number of victims in the Mediterranean area. These processes occur by short and intense rainfall affecting limited areas of a few square kilometers, with rapid hydrological responses. Among the causes of the flood frequency increase in the last decades are the effects of the urban expansion in areas of fluvial pertinence and climatic change, namely the interaction between anthropogenic landforms and hydro-geomorphological dynamics. In this paper the authors show a comparison between flood events with very similar weather-hydrological characteristics and the ground effects occurred in coastal areas of three regions located at the top of a triangle in the Ligurian Sea, namely Liguria, Tuscany and Sardinia. With respect to the meteorological-hydrological hazard, it should be noted that the events analyzed occurred during autumn, in the conditions of a storm system triggered by cyclogenesis on the Genoa Gulf or by the extra-tropical cyclone Cleopatra. The “flash floods” damage recorded in the inhabited areas is due to the vulnerability of the elements at risk in the fluvio-coastal plains examined. There are numerous anthropogenic forcings that have influenced the hydro-geomorphological dynamics and that have led to an increase in risk conditions.