Assessing People´s Early Warning Response Capability to Inform Urban Planning Interventions to Reduce Vulnerability to Tsunamis : Case Study of Padang City, Indonesia

In the last decade, more emphasis is given on the human aspect of early warning or the attribute of “people-centered” early warning systems. This study seeks to better understand the specific conditions that shape people´s vulnerability in relation to their tsunami early warning response capability. The study lays emphasis on the bottlenecks within social conditions, issues of perception, and their linkages with urban evacuation spatial and infrastructure requirements. The study is based on an in-depth case study of the coastal city of Padang, Indonesia. Founded on literature study on vulnerability and early warning concepts, a conceptual study was developed. Here, vulnerability was defined as “the conditions which influence the level of exposure and capability of people to respond to the warning and conduct appropriate evacuation, and in the long term, to change those conditions and enhance their response capability”. The study is composed of three main assessment blocks: i) current spatial hotspots and bottlenecks within social conditions assessments; ii) assessment of perception issues related with on-going or planned interventions; and iii) assessment of urban planning´s role and influence on vulnerability and people´s response capability. The first assessment block consists of spatial and temporal distribution of various social groups in the exposed areas (dynamic exposure); their access to safe places; their access to warning; and their evacuation behaviour. The second assessment block examines various cognitive factors connected with objective knowledge as well as socio-psychological factors pertaining to vulnerability reduction. These are intention to evacuate (reactive action) and intention to support improvement of evacuation infrastructure and facilities (proactive action). Moreover, perceptions connected with challenges of possible relocation as well as overall tsunami preparedness are explored. The third assessment block explores the urban planning´s role and interventions linked with various response capability components. In order to assess different thematic areas, an interdisciplinary approach is required, using engineering and social behavioural sciences approaches. Therefore, the combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods is used. The results show that Padang´s current response capability varies according to its spatial and infrastructure setting as well as people´s socio-economic characteristics. Evacuation facilities and infrastructure were still lacking and their utilization was influenced by social conditions of the people. This implied a significant role for urban planning which needs to take into account various social groups´ specific needs while incorporating the importance of strategic risk communication within various interventions. The assessment needs to be integrated in the overall urban planning process and may provide guidance in finding the balance between long-term exposure reduction in dangerous areas and additional protection measures for mass evacuation

Integrating Remote Sensing and Social Science - The correlation of urban morphology with socioeconomic parameters

The alignment, small-scale transitions and characteristics of buildings, streets and open spaces constitute a heterogeneous urban morphology. The urban morphology is the physical reflection of a society that created it, influenced by historical, social, cultural, economic, political, demographic and natural conditions as well as their developments. Within the complex urban environment homogeneous physical patterns and sectors of similar building types, structural alignments or similar built-up densities can be localized and classified. Accordingly, it is assumed that urban societies also feature a distinctive socioeconomic urban morphology that is strongly correlated with the characteristics of a city’s physical morphology: Social groups settle spatially with one’s peer more or less segregated from other social groups according to, amongst other things, their economic status. This study focuses on the analysis, whether the static physical urban morphology correlates with socioeconomic parameters of its inhabitants – here with the example indicators income and value of property. Therefore, the study explores on the capabilities of high resolution optical satellite data (Ikonos) to classify patterns of urban morphology based on physical parameters. In addition a household questionnaire was developed to investigate on the cities socioeconomic morphology

Assessing people´s early warning response capability to inform urban planning interventions to reduce vulnerability to tsunamis : case study of Padang City, Indonesia

In the last decade, more emphasis is given on the human aspect of early warning or the attribute of “people-centered” early warning systems. This study seeks to better understand the specific conditions that shape people´s vulnerability in relation to their tsunami early warning response capability. The study lays emphasis on the bottlenecks within social conditions, issues of perception, and their linkages with urban evacuation spatial and infrastructure requirements. The study is based on an in-depth case study of the coastal city of Padang, Indonesia. Founded on literature study on vulnerability and early warning concepts, a conceptual study was developed. Here, vulnerability was defined as “the conditions which influence the level of exposure and capability of people to respond to the warning and conduct appropriate evacuation, and in the long term, to change those conditions and enhance their response capability”. The study is composed of three main assessment blocks: i) current spatial hotspots and bottlenecks within social conditions assessments; ii) assessment of perception issues related with on-going or planned interventions; and iii) assessment of urban planning´s role and influence on vulnerability and people´s response capability. The first assessment block consists of spatial and temporal distribution of various social groups in the exposed areas (dynamic exposure); their access to safe places; their access to warning; and their evacuation behaviour. The second assessment block examines various cognitive factors connected with objective knowledge as well as socio-psychological factors pertaining to vulnerability reduction. These are intention to evacuate (reactive action) and intention to support improvement of evacuation infrastructure and facilities (proactive action). Moreover, perceptions connected with challenges of possible relocation as well as overall tsunami preparedness are explored. The third assessment block explores the urban planning´s role and interventions linked with various response capability components. In order to assess different thematic areas, an interdisciplinary approach is required, using engineering and social behavioural sciences approaches. Therefore, the combination of qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods is used. The results show that Padang´s current response capability varies according to its spatial and infrastructure setting as well as people´s socio-economic characteristics. Evacuation facilities and infrastructure were still lacking and their utilization was influenced by social conditions of the people. This implied a significant role for urban planning which needs to take into account various social groups´ specific needs while incorporating the importance of strategic risk communication within various interventions. The assessment needs to be integrated in the overall urban planning process and may provide guidance in finding the balance between long-term exposure reduction in dangerous areas and additional protection measures for mass evacuation

Integrating Socio-Economic Data in Spatial Analysis: An Exposure Analysis Method for Planning Urban Risk Mitigation

For disaster risk management and risk-based urban planning, time-dependent knowledge on the spatial distribution of various social groups is of critical importance. However, in a highly dynamic urbanizing world data are mostly outdated, generalized, not area-wide, not reliable or even not existing. This paper explores the potential of interdisciplinary integration of social science and remote sensing to deal with the problem of area-wide and up-to-date information derivation of the spatial distribution of population, and especially the vulnerable groups. The integration of conventional socio-economic data (census and household survey data) with the structural information of the urban landscape extracted from remotely sensed data aims at assessing dynamic exposure of various social groups. The analysis was done for the case study in the tsunami and earthquake prone coastal city of Padang, West Sumatra, Indonesia. The information generated is particularly useful for giving an additional insight for urban planners, how land use and urban development shape the exposure of various social groups to natural hazards

The Last-Mile Evacuation project: A multi-disciplinary to evacuation planning and risk reduction in tsunami-threatened coastal areas

In view of recent tragic and disastrous tsunami events such as the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 or the Tohoku-Oki tsunami in 2011 it is still indispensable to aim at deepening our insight into the mechanisms which turn natural disasters into life-changing events for those individuals living at regions at risk. In this context risk mitigation on the basis of wellimplemented early warning systems is inevitable to reduce human losses and to pave the way for specific measures on disaster recovery. A possible work chain to assess this complex objective is exemplified by the interdisciplinary “Last-Mile Evacuation project” which focused on the city of Padang, Indonesia. This city is one of the cities worldwide most imperiled by tsunamis since it is located in the direct neighborhood to the Sunda arc with an average warning time below 30 minutes. The work chain presented in the present paper comprises the generation and compilation of the underlying geo data basis, the simulation of hydrodynamics, the assessment of physical vulnerability using remote sensing data and techniques, the assessment of social vulnerability related with people´s exposure, risk perception, and evacuation behavior, and the modeling of potential evacuation routes. While the main focus of the original project was on city-wide risk assessment, the focal point of this study is a close-up view of the micro-scale dynamics of inundation and evacuation on urban district level. The existing situation and urban setting is subsequently compared with alternative shelter options. Additionally, qualitative information on social aspects to be considered in developing appropriate mitigation options is outlined. It is anticipated to communicate best-practice knowledge on how to approach the assessment of tsunami hazard with potential overlapping areas to other natural disasters

Enhanced crisis-preparation of Critical Infrastructures through a participatory qualitative-quantitative interdependency analysis approach

Critical Infrastructure (CI) failures are aggravated by cascading effects due to interdependencies between different infrastructure systems and with emergency management. Findings of the German, BMBF-funded research project “CIRMin” highlight needs for concrete assessments of such interdependencies. Driven by challenges of limited data and knowledge accessibility, the developed approach integrates qualitative information from expert interviews and discussions with quantitative, place-based analyses in three selected German cities and an adjacent county. This paper particularly discusses how the mixed methods approach has been operationalized. Based on anonymized findings, it provides a comprehensive guidance to interdependency analysis, from survey and categorization of system elements and interrelations, their possible mutual impacts, to zooming into selected dependencies through GIS mapping. This facilitates reliably assessing the need for maintenance of critical functionalities in crisis situations, available resources, auxiliary powers, and optimization of response time