Evaluating and analyzing the comprehensive community disaster reduction capability

Abstract. China currently faces the important task of strengthening its regional disaster reduction capabilities. Communities are basic components of urban areas, and ensuring that they participate in disaster reduction is important for urban safety. In this paper, in view of the imperfect evaluation criteria in the National demonstration community of comprehensive disaster reduction (NDCCDR), and according to the connotation of community comprehensive disaster reduction capability (CCDRC), we construct an index system to evaluate the CCDRC; the system is comprised of six primary evaluation indices that measure the ability to evaluate disaster risk, the ability to provide rescue and support, the presence of engineering defenses, the presence of social and economic base support, the ability to manage disasters, and the level of public cognitive ability. These six primary indices include 31 secondary indices. Because the index system is characterized by a small sample size, sparse information, and large spatial extent, for the index system, we evaluate CCDRC using the entropy-weighted grey target model and geographic information system (GIS) overlay analysis. According to the distribution status of NDCCDR, we take the Suzhou New District (SND) as a case study for the empirical measurements and calculations and use ArcMap 10.2 software to produce a map of the spatial distribution of CCDRC in this region. The results indicate that the area's CCDRC is relatively weak. The spatial distribution of CCDRC is uneven. However, the CCDRC in the region has a good foundation and it also has large potential for improvement. The results also show that all of the NDCCDR are in the forefront of the case area, but their CCDRC is unbalanced and their primary evaluation indices of CCDRC are also not balanced. Therefore, we propose that the construction of NDCCDR and CCDRC should be combined, from point to face, and ultimately to improve the overall level of CCDRC in the community.