Networks that unite: A study on community support networks in contexts of environmental and anthropic vulnerability due to torrential floods as an expression of community resilience

Abstract

The objective of this article is to contrast community support networks in vulnerable contexts, recognizing them as expressions of community resilience within the framework of the project “Vulnerability, resilience and risk of communities and supply basins affected by landslide and avalanche phenomena” where two territories are chosen, ex-post and ex-ante respectively, with risk factors for torrential flooding. As a result, two types of support networks are evident: first, combined networks where different actors come together to work around the needs of the population, and second, circumstantial networks, which emerge at a particular moment and disappear at the moment that the situation is resolved. This qualitative research seeks the understanding, reconstruction, and interpretation of moments, facts, conditions, and actions from the voices of the subjects who experience certain phenomena, creating with them an “everything-with-meaning”, according to their stories, trajectories, and subjectivities. Document review techniques, community-based reports, and semi-structured interviews were implemented, as well as the application of identification and characterization instruments of actors and networks.