Risk Reduction at the "Last-Mile": an attempt to turn science into action by the example of Padang, Indonesia

Abstract

More than ever before, the last decade revealed the immense vulnerability of the world’s cities to natural hazards. Neither the tsunami in the Indian Ocean in 2004, the hurricane Katrina in 2005, the cyclone Nargis in 2008 nor the earthquakes in Sichuan in 2008 or in Haiti 2010 found the people, the city administrations or the national or international organizations well prepared in the advent of anticipated, but to a large extent disregarded natural disasters. It is evident that the lack of tailor-made disaster management plans and standard operational procedures are often the crucial point in proper risk reduction approaches. This study presents an approach to transfer advancement of knowledge of an extensive interdisciplinary scientific study on risk identification into a master plan for risk mitigation. The study has been conducted by means of a setting up capacities and experts from different scientific communities coming from civil and coastal engineering, remote sensing, social sciences, evacuation modeling and capacity building. The paper presents the results of this research approach and interweaves key findings with recently made experiences from an eyewitness on a previous hazard event. Thus, necessary tsunami hazard and vulnerability information and in consequence valuable insights on preparedness activities have been derived for initiating updated infrastructural designs and practical recommendations for emergency management and strategic spatial planning activities at the local scale. The approach was applied in the context of tsunami early warning and evacuation planning in the coastal city of Padang, Western Sumatra, Republic of Indonesia.