Psychological preparedness of coastal communities in Surabaya: a preliminary finding

Abstract

Indonesia has been acknowledged as one of countries that has the largest coastline in the world after Canada and Norway. Situated between Australia plate, Pacific plate, and Eurasia plate has made the country prone to disaster. Tsunami is one of the disasters that struck coastal communities in Indonesia. Tsunami is one type of disaster that bring devastated impact economically, socially and psychologically especially for the coastal communities including for Surabaya community that live along the coast. Studies found that psychologically preparing individual to face disaster could help to reduce the psychological impact of the disaster. Therefore, identifying the psychological preparedness is pertinent to reduce the risk of disaster especially for the coastal communities in Surabaya that were prone to tsunamis and other natural hazards. The purpose of the study is to describe the psychological preparedness for disaster of coastal communities in Surabaya. The result shows that the psychological preparedness for disaster of the participants was mostly in average level. Therefore, psychological preparedness for disaster needs to be improved especially among female with age between 12-35 years old population in order to reduce the risk of psychological impact of disaster.