Building rural resilience in seismically active regions

While increasing resilience to earthquakes around the globe has become a major research and policy agenda, much of the focus has been on urban areas, and megacities in particular. Despite this, rural areas still contain more than 70% of the population of many earthquake-prone countries in the Global South, indicating that rural residents will make up a significant proportion of those exposed to future earthquakes. Rural areas are particularly vulnerable because they often lack the resources and expertise to respond to disasters. This vulnerability may be greatly enhanced by patterns of migration and rural depopulation, leaving behind those residents who are least able to mitigate or respond to disasters; and through the expansion of informal, peri-urban settlements, on the periphery of towns and cities. In addition, the hazards that pose the greatest threat to rural populations (such as landsliding) differ from those in urban areas (such as building collapse and the destruction of infrastructure) suggesting that the transfer of lessons learned in cities may be inadequate. The main aims of this study are to understand community perception of earthquake-related hazard in rural areas of the Global South, and the factors increasing the vulnerability of rural communities to seismic hazards, with a view to identifying current research needs across the physical and social sciences. Specifically, this study will (1) determine the extent of local understanding of earthquake and landslide hazard, and explore how, given lay people's everyday livelihood concerns, to best engage them in discussions around rare high-magnitude events; (2) identify the factors that increase the vulnerability of rural communities to seismic hazards; (3) use scenarios and participatory exercises to explore a set of co-produced solutions or coping strategies, such as micro-scale hazard assessment, that communities might use to enhance their resilience to earthquakes; and (4) identify any barriers to their uptake or research gaps that must be addressed before these strategies can be implemented. The scoping study will focus on Nepal; a country where one or more great earthquakes may be overdue, where campaigns by NGOs to raise awareness of earthquake hazards have tended so far to focus on urban areas, and where field research in rural areas suggests that there is minimal earthquake awareness among local populations. Working with our project partners NSET and Kadambari College (National School of Social Work), we will compare two communities: a recently-settled, peri-urban area and a more remote, established rural community. The primary outcome of the project will be the identification of current research needs and the gaps that will prevent implementation of effective resilience measures at the community level. When combined with new research on earthquake hazards and the many secondary perils that accompany large earthquakes, our project will provide guidance for how best to merge scientific understanding of earthquakes with local knowledge of how to live with them.