Human Response to Extreme Events: a review of three post-tsunami disaster case studies

Abstract

Investigating survivors' behaviour prior to, during and after a disaster provides emergency management agencies with greater understanding of the complexities which influence public response. This information can then be used to develop better community-based disaster risk-reduction strategies. In this paper, we review three post-tsunami disaster case studies: the Indian Ocean tsunami (IOT) on 26 December 2004, the Java tsunami on 17 July 2006 and the South Pacific tsunami on 29 September 2009. The 2004 IOT and 2006 Java tsunami surveys involved delayed-response post-disaster research using video interviewing. The 2009 South Pacific tsunami entailed rapid-response post-disaster research using questionnaire interviews. We highlight the major outcomes of each case study and, based on these, make recommendations for improving tsunami education programs in Australia. These include educating the public about tsunami risk, natural warning signs of tsunamis and regionally specific behavioural response. To help facilitate improvements to future post-disaster research, discussion on survey-related issues from each case study is provided.

Keywords:

• Tsunami education
• Indian Ocean tsunami
• Java tsunami
• South Pacific tsunami
• post-disaster survey
• interviews
• questionnaires

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank all people involved in the research, particularly tsunami survivors who were willing to share their experiences, but also Walter Dudley from the Pacific Tsunami Museum, James Goff and Dale Dominey-Howes from the Australia-Pacific Tsunami Research Centre, the local volunteers, and all members of the UNESCO-IOC ITST Social Impacts Team, without whom this study could not have taken place. Deanne Bird acknowledges funding from Rannís—the Icelandic Centre for Research (Research Grant #081260008). Catherine Chagué-Goff acknowledges funding from NOAA Pacific Services Centre, UNSW (Grant SPF01) and the Australian Research Council (Discovery Grant DP0877572). Finally, we would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for constructive and insightful comments, and John Connell for careful editorial handling.