Relationship between disaster awareness and disaster preparedness: online survey of the community in Indonesia

Abstract

Background: Indonesia is a country that is classified as prone to disasters because of its territory that has a lot of tectonic activity and is located between the ring of fire. Given the urgency of improving people's preparedness for disasters, studies are needed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the factors associated with disasters. One of which is disaster preparedness, that is influenced by public awareness of disasters. Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the relationship between current awareness level of the community towards disaster and Community preparedness for disaster preparedness efforts in Indonesia. Methods: The design of this study was cross-sectional. Data were collected by a self-administered online survey. The study respondents were community that are accessible and were willing to fill out questionnaires voluntarily. The research was conducted in March-October 2021 with the nation as the research location. The size of the sample was 400 respondents obtained from the calculation of estimation in finite population. Results: Respondents with lower current awareness level of the community towards disaster had higher risk 1.49 times to have lower community preparedness for disaster preparedness efforts compared to respondents with higher community preparedness for disaster preparedness efforts (PR=1.49, 95%CI=1.25-1.76, p<0.001). Conclusions: Increasing public awareness about disaster preparedness is very important. The government can work with non-governmental organizations and community leaders to provide understanding and training to the community to deal with disasters.