Project Objectives

• to bring out a) the ‘status quo’, and b) the trends of regional vulnerability and robustness (‘resilience’) of social systems by describing and analysing the essential sensitive structures and parameters in their reciprocal dependencies with other social and natural subsystems respectively.
• to analyse decision and adaptation strategies of individuals, families, political and administrative units under changing natural, especially climatic and economical, fundamental conditions including repercussions to natural and social subsystems.
• to analyse "possibility spaces" and future scenarios for establishing sustainable social adaptation strategies as responses to possible severe disturbances and catastrophic worsening (such as continuous droughts) in the sense of sustainable improvements in the life quality of the rural population.
• to develop and to operationalize an integrative, dynamic concept of "life quality" which is geared to the north-eastern region.
• to develop a partial model for social adaptation dynamics for integrated modelling.

Progress and Results

The main task during the report period was the preparation and execution of the socio-economic survey in Tauá and the focus region Picos. Due to missing financial support for the brazilian partners, the working group 'Socio-cultural Analyses' from University of Kassel had to organize, finance and execute this survey in opposite to the actual plannings. This caused some restructuring of the timetable and so the groundchecks and the delivery of an executable action model for the 'Integrated Modeling' working group is delayed. Based on a questionnaire by Brühl & Lantermann, a new instrument was developped. The questionnaire identifies the facets of the Threat-Adaptaion-Competence model (TCA-model) in respect to its theoretical foundations. Francisco Matias and co-workers of municipal administrative units of Tauá for the Tauá region and Universidade Federal of Piauí for the focus region of Picos (9 municipes) interviewed 100 families in each region in march and april 1999. The data was encoded in Kassel and first steps in statistical analysis were done.

Francisco Matias worked out profiles of the communities where the survey took place.

Andreas Döring and Martin Grebe worked out some modifications of the TCA-model. A reduced set of adaption strategies was specified and a need-control mechanism was implemented. In addition, a submodel for natural population development was developped. These steps had been discussed with brazilian experts during their trip to Recife, Fortaleza, Tauá and Picos.

Andreas Döring and Martin Grebe participated in the WAVES workshop 'Modeling aspects' at Potsdam in January 1999 and presented the actualized version of the TCA-model.

Francisco Matias da Rocha, Andreas Döring and Martin Grebe participated in the WAVES bilateral scientific meeting in Fortaleza in April 1999. Two presentations and several talks with brazilian partners took place..

b) Cooperation

First implementations of the TCA-model were discussed with brazilian counterparts in Recife and Fortaleza. Andreas Doering and Martin Grebe met Ricardo Lima (UFPe) and most of the members of the brazilian research groups to discuss model parts and the links to other models. Especially specific topics concerning economics had been discussed widely.

During the workshop in Fortaleza, a meeting of the modeling workgroups from Kassel and Fortaleza (Julio Wilson and collaegues from UFC) was arranged to exchange experiences according to the problems how to handle incomplete datasets.

c) Exploitation

Andreas Doering and Martin Grebe. (1999). The TCA-approach as an approach to action modeling. Lecture held at WAVES-workshop 'Modeling aspects' at Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.

Andreas Doering and Martin Grebe. (1999). Levels of research and levels of data. Lecture held at the Department of Social Works of Universidade Federal of Pernambuco.

Francisco Matias. (1999). Political analysis of communities in north-east Brazil. Lecture held at the bilateral scientific meeting at Universidade Federal of Ceará.

Andreas Doering and Martin Grebe. (1999). The Threat-Competence-Adaptation model. Lecture held at the bilateral scientific meeting at Universidade Federal of Ceará.

Dagmar Fuhr. (1999) Extent and causes of international migration. Contribution to the workshop talks of the German IDNDR-Committee (International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduce) 'Future threats through anthropogene natural disasters' at Potsdam Institute for Climate Research.
 

Project Management Structure

Outlook

The data of the 1999 survey will be encoded and first statistical analyses will be done.

The main tasks within the next period of research are:

a) the further implementation of the TCA-model,

b) the successive evaluation and correction of the TCA-model based on the survey data and

c) working out of community profiles.
 

Administrative Aspects

This year the financial resources will be adequately.
 

b) Staff situation

There were no changes concerning the staff situation.
 

back