Research Trends on Natural Hazards, Disasters, Risk Reduction and Climate Change in Indonesia: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Abstract. Indonesia is one of the most vulnerable countries from disasters and climate change. While there have been a proliferations of academic publications written on issues related to natural hazards, disasters and risk reduction, and climate change risk in Indonesia, there have not been any review done systematically to determine the progress, key topics discussed and which topics needed to be researched further. The author did a systematic literature review on related publications that are indexed within SCOPUS database with the timeline from 1900 to 2016. The findings are outlined in two parts. The first part focuses on the research topics. It is found that the publications can be categorized into three major topics of (1) natural hazard, risks and disaster assessments (HRD), (2) disaster risk reduction (DRR), and (3) climate change risks, vulnerability, impacts and adaptation (CC). More than half are on HRD, focusing on volcanic eruption, tsunami and earthquake. Research on DRR focuses on governance, recovery and reconstruction, early warning systems. Those on CC are mainly on emission reduction, forestry, governance, and impacts. The second part focuses on roles of Indonesian researchers and organizations in these researches. Findings show limited progress in research, publications and collaborations. International/non-Indonesian authors dominate the number of researchers and only half of the publications are co-authored by Indonesians. Moreover, international collaborations took place only by limited Indonesian organizations. This could be contributed by limited experiences on collaborations, power play amongst researchers, lack of capacity for research, weak English academic writings capacity, and lack of incentives for international collaborations and publications within the Indonesia higher education system.