Role of community's vulnerability at local level and its contribution to tsunami risk in Indonesia: Study case at Padang municipality

Abstract

It has been generally understood that majority of the coastal region in Indonesia are potentially affected by tsunami disaster risk. Several tsunami disasters reported had been struck some coastal region in Indonesia. The worst evidence was in Aceh in 2004 which killed more than 150.000 peoples. One month after Tsunami disaster in Aceh, The World Conference on Disaster Reduction at Kobe in 2005 outlined the significant endeavor to develop the understanding on community’s vulnerability in order to reduce the disasters risk. Vulnerability together with natural hazard is the factors which determine the degree of risk. However, natural hazard, its magnitude and intensity, is beyond of human control; in contrary vulnerability is a factor that is influenced by the process of human social activity. Consequently, vulnerability plays an important role to determine the degree of the disaster risk. Therefore, it is very important to increase the understanding of vulnerabilities, its role and contribution, within different social groups in order to reduce the risk of disaster. This study is objected to examine the vulnerability of the exposed community to tsunami disaster at three priorities area in Indonesia which potentially affected by tsunami hazard. This paper advances the theoretical and conceptual frameworks of vulnerability to understanding the spatial dimension of vulnerability. It shows an insight into different methodologies and data sources that can be used to assess various characteristics of vulnerability. The initial result of this study, by means of household-questionnaires based, are shown and discussed. This study demonstrates some vulnerability variation at the pilot areas that may affect the communities to the tsunami risk. In this paper is presented the preliminary result of vulnerability assessment at Padang Municipality as an example.