Analysis of Social Resilience to the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Algeria (original) (raw)

Community resilience to pandemics: An assessment framework developed based on the review of COVID-19 literature

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 2022

The COVID-19 outbreak in 2019 and the challenges it posed to communities around the world, demonstrated the necessity of enhancing the resilience of communities to pandemics. In this regard, assessment frameworks can play an essential role and guide resilience-building efforts. However, the lack of a comprehensive assessment framework has led to a focus on sectoral evaluation. This study aims to propose an integrated framework for assessing the pandemic resilience of communities. For this purpose, we rely on a systematic review of literature indexed in major academic databases. We have thoroughly analyzed a total number of 115 related documents to extract relevant criteria. Findings show that many criteria and factors affect community resilience to pandemics. By inductive content coding in MAXQDA software, we have categorized these criteria into five dimensions of Institutional, Social, Economic, Infrastructural, and Demographic. Good leadership and management, insurance and governmental support, planning and preparation, expertise and labor, and available equipment and technologies are the most important institutional criteria. Communication and collective identity, mutual support, public safety and protection, public awareness, and social justice are the influential social criteria. Economic sustainability and resource availability are criteria of economic resilience. Sufficiency of services, public spaces, housing tenure, and transportation system are the main criteria related to the built environment and infrastructural dimension. Finally, demographic resilience includes physical health, psychological well-being, life quality, and hygiene. Based on these criteria, this study develops an integrated evaluation framework that researchers can implement along with conventional assessment and ranking methods to determine the level of community resilience to pandemics.

Transition from Social Vulnerability to Resiliency vis-à-vis COVID-19

2020

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed systemic deficiencies in preparing and planning for disasters, with profound health, economic, social, political, and humanitarian consequences. When preparing for pandemics, social vulnerability needs to be assessed using vulnerability indices to identify which populations are at greater risk. In this context, we examined the possible association of social vulnerabilities in U.S. cities with COVID-19 case fatality ratios. Post-pandemic return to normalcy is fraught with uncertainty over the ability of different communities to recover with varying degrees of resilience. Towards this, we recommend use of a community resiliency planning framework, along with modeling and evaluation of the required measures, which may be useful for the Indian scenario.

Social Resilience Promotion Factors during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights from Urmia, Iran

Urban Science, 2022

Social resilience is an essential need for societies faced with adverse events such as pandemics. The recent COVID-19 outbreak has affected many communities around the globe. In fact, in addition to unprecedented mortality and infection rates, it has also caused major anxieties and social problems. Iran has been one of the hardest-hit countries and is among those that have experienced multiple waves of the outbreak. In this study, we try to identify major factors that can contribute to urban social resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic in Urmia, a major city located in Northwestern Iran. Data for the study were collected via a field visit and a semi-structured interview survey involving 194 participants. Findings show that several factors related to the following three themes play a significant role in promoting social resilience: (1) participative and supportive governance, (2) resource accessibility, and (3) citizen participation and lawfulness. Results can inform local authorit...

The Resilience of Egyptian Cities against Health Crises 'Egyptian Pandemic City Tool'

Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2022

The world today, recovering from a pandemic crisis, has witnessed a complete change in everyday challenges and routines. Following the COVID-19 crisis, the world was forced to face the challenge of preserving human life. Today, city planners and urban designers have to establish cities that can mitigate the impact of health problems; in other words, the city's urban product must be more resilient against health problems. The condition of completely shutting down urban areas and transforming them into infirmities has led to great economic and social crises. Economically, the world has lost at least 3.7 trillion dollars, equivalent to 4.4% of the Global Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The present paper aims at developing a tool that has the ability to measure the resilience of the Egyptian urban settlements against pandemic crises; thus, helping planners and urban designers to establish and promote pandemic cities. Based on profound theoretical and analytical studies, the concept of pandemic cities was studied and analyzed composing a list of indicators that illustrate the ability of existing urban settlements to face pandemic crises. Then, based on the findings of an empirical study that targeted Egyptian experts, the most relevant indicators were identified. Using relative importance index (RII), the relative weights of indicators were calculated and utilized as a tool that can measure the resilience of Egyptian urban settlements against pandemic crises.

Social resilience and welfare systems under COVID-19: A European comparative perspective

Global Social Policy, 2021

COVID-19 and the corresponding economic lockdown and income loss for large segments of population was something unexpected for all European countries, and their welfare systems were not prepared to protect their citizens from such threats. Social resilience is becoming used in disaster risk analysis, and preferred to that of vulnerability, to refer the ability of the social entities to respond to such challenges, enabling them to cope and adjust to adverse events. It has been more recently used in the context of the European Union (EU) about COVID-19, regarding the creation of the Recovery and Resilience Facility, intended to mitigate the economic and social impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The global nature of this pandemic makes possible and relevant a deeper understanding of social resilience at different levels of analysis: international, national, local and individual/household levels. This article aims to contribute to this by proposing a set of indicators of social resilience in face of COVID-19, supported in a theoretical framework developed herein, and comparing the performance of a selection of EU countries with distinct welfare system configurations, with different roles played by the government, the market, the social organizations and the families. Using comparable statistical data at macro level and data concerning the responses of government to the economic and social effects of the pandemic, we produce a synthetic index of social resilience, combining resilience on coping and resilience on adapting. We relate the differences found in coping and adapting with the welfare system configurations of these countries.

Evidence of the Relationship between Social Vulnerability and the Spread of COVID-19 in Urban Spaces

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health

Modeling the social-spatial structure of urban spaces can facilitate the development of guidelines aimed at curbing the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic while also acting as an instrument that helps decision-making concerning mitigation policies. The modeling process starts with categorization of urban spaces based on the concept of social vulnerability. A model is created based on this concept and the theory of analysis of social areas. Statistical techniques of factor analysis and geostatistics are applied. This generates a map of social differentiation that, when related to data on the evolution of the contagion, generates a multidimensional model of social vulnerability. The application of this model towards people (social structure) and the environment where they live (spatial structure) is specified. Our model assumes the uniqueness of cities, and it is intended to be a broadly applicable model that can be extrapolated to other urban areas if pertinent revisions are made. Our w...

Building a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to the COVID-19 pandemic

BMJ Global Health

The current global systemic crisis reveals how globalised societies are unprepared to face a pandemic. Beyond the dramatic loss of human life, the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered widespread disturbances in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems in many countries across the world. Resilience describes the capacities of natural and human systems to prevent, react to and recover from shocks. Societal resilience to the current COVID-19 pandemic relates to the ability of societies in maintaining their core functions while minimising the impact of the pandemic and other societal effects. Drawing on the emerging evidence about resilience in health, social, economic, environmental and governance systems, this paper delineates a multisystemic understanding of societal resilience to COVID-19. Such an understanding provides the foundation for an integrated approach to build societal resilience to current and future pandemics.

Community Resilience in Urban Plural Context: Assessing Challenges and Strategies in Times of Covid- 19 Pandemic

2021

Some cities in Indonesia are currently known to be prone to crisis due to Covid-19 pandemic. Some of them are also known to be building resilience system in their urban management program. Meanwhile, as we might already be aware of, those cities are plural in terms of social differences and identities. As a matter of fact, the success of policies, as in urban resilience building, are dependent towards the involvement of community. Therefore, it is interesting to scrutinize how cities that are socially plural strive to manage pandemic crisis and risks in their regions? How are minority groups and poor people, who are usually more prone to the crisis, involved in the local government's urban resilience project? And, what kind of strategies does the government apply to integrate social inclusion in urban resilience policy? What alternatives does community build to support their collective resilience? This research is proposed to reveal this issue by studying the experiences of Semarang city, Central Java, Indonesia in terms of social structure, as well as risks in times of Covid-19 pandemic. This study is expected to identify the social complexities in urban resilience policy, as well as the strategies applied either by the government and community to cope with these situations.

Strengthening Societal Resilience During COVID-19 Pandemic

Wiadomosci lekarskie, 2021

OBJECTIVE The aim: To investigate factors that can negatively affect societal resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and identify communication aspects of strengthening resilience through information policy formation. PATIENTS AND METHODS Materials and methods: In the research process, the authors employed the monographic and abstract-logical methods. The communication aspect analysis of strengthening social resilience in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic also grounded upon the results of the authors' sociological study "Motivation of compliance/non-compliance with quarantine restrictions by the population of Ukraine". Focus-group interviews and surveys. A total of 1,700 respondents represent the adult population of Ukraine aged 18 and older (except those living on the territory temporarily not controlled by the Ukrainian authorities - the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, some areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions). The error of the study representativeness...

Factors explaining social resilience against COVID-19: the case of Spain

European Societies, 2020

Between March and May, Spain was one of the hardest-hit European countries by the COVID-19 pandemic and registered one of the highest death rates in the world. Among other measures, the political response was a lockdown of more than three months that was applied by means of six fifteen-day extensions. The Spanish Sociological Research Centre (Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas; CIS, in its Spanish acronym) carried out a survey in early June (n = 4,258) asking respondents about their rating of the response to the situation and their ability to cope with further extensions of the state of emergency. The concept of resilience is key to understanding this situation and the population’s ability to face up to it. This paper analyses factors that help bolster resilience, which include confidence in the political leader and in the perception or rating of the measures adopted. The conclusion highlights the importance of political communication, both of leadership and of political measures, in fostering social resilience.