Factors Affecting Rural Communities Cope With Floods Engineering Measures Adopted Analysis

Climate change is one of the major challenges facing human society in the21stcentury. Extreme weather has become the social focus because of its increasing frequency.How to deal with extreme climate and take adaptive actions to reduce risk is the main taskfacing governments. Located in north Jiangxi province, middle and lower reaches ofYangtze River, as China’s important protection zone with ecological functions, having thefunctions of flood-control, moderating climate, degradating pollution, Poyang LakeEco-economic Region is also the world’s important ecological zone named by World-WideFund of Nature. Being China’s main rice producing areas, flood and drought are the mostfrequent natural calamities in Poyang Lake Eco-economic Region. This paper mainlydiscuss flood.As the field of quantitative study based on large-scale field research is still blank inchina, the research group has done a comprehensive study on the factors influencingengineering measures taken by rural communities while dealing with floods. On one hand,the domestic gap in this area is filled, on the other hand, it provides guidance for farmers toavoid risks, and reliable scientific data for government to formulate policies. It alsobenefits the improvement of relevant law and regulations. Underpinned by EconomicsPhilosophy, the figures for2010-2012from90villages around Poyang Lake Eco-economicRegion are used as the baseline of the study. Using descriptive statistical analysis andeconometric model, this paper mainly studies the factors influencing engineering measurestaken by rural communities.The study shows that while facing floods, most rural communities would takeengineering measures. Among the66affected villages,85%of the rural communitiesreceived flooding warning and control information offered by governments, while only36%of them received capital, material, technological support. The flooding warning andcontrol information offered by governments are one of the main factors improving theadoption of engineering flood control measures. The age and education of village leaders,percentage of non-agricultural population, number of enterprises in townships, communitypopulation.etc are also important influencing factors. Physio geographic conditions in ruralcommunities also limit the adoption of engineering measures. All in all, to cope withextreme weather and promote engineering measures, we need to construct a feasiblemeteorological disaster early-warning system, establish information exchange network,improve government financial and tax support, perfect supervision system, improvevillager leaders’ quality, develop rural economy, and attract investments.etc.