Assessment of human immediate response capability related to tsunami threats in Indonesia at a sub-national scale

Abstract

Human immediate response is contextualized into different time compartments reflecting the tsunami early warning chain. Based on the different time compartments the available response time and evacuation time is quantified. The latter incorporates accessibility of safe areas determined by a hazard assessment, as well as environmental and demographic impacts on evacuation speed properties assessed using a Cost Distance Weighting GIS approach. Approximately 4.35 million Indonesians live in tsunami endangered areas on the southern coasts of Sumatra, Java and Bali and have between 20 and 150 min to reach a tsunamisafe area. Most endangered areas feature longer estimatedevacuation times and hence the population possesses a weak immediate response capability leaving them more vulnerable to being directly impacted by a tsunami. At a subnational scale these hotspots were identified and include: the Mentawai islands off the Sumatra coast, various sub-districts on Sumatra and west and east Java. Based on the presented approach a temporal dynamic estimation of casualties and displacements as a function of available response time is obtained for the entire coastal area. As an example, a worst case tsunami scenario for Kuta (Bali) results in casualties of 25 000 with an optimal response time (direct evacuation when receiving a tsunami warning) and 120 000 for minimal response time (no evacuation). The estimated casualties correspond well to observed/reported values and overall model uncertainty is low with a standard error of 5%. The results obtained allow for prioritization of intervention measures such as early warning chain, evacuation and contingency planning, awareness and preparedness strategies down to a sub-district level and can be used in tsunami early warning decision support. © Author(s) 2009.