Disaster preparedness and sustainable disaster risk management in a changing environment

Abstract

The cost of climate change-related disasters in terms of the lives lost and the damages to the social, economic and environmental assets are predicted to be higher. Disaster risk management is one of the crucial pillars with which to face this emerging trend in order to ensure the goals of are achieved sustainable development. However, the sustainability of the disaster risk management development is also significantly more complicated in changing conditions. It is necessary to look for ways to build a disaster-resilient society. This paper focuses on exploring the possibilities of supporting the sustainability of the disaster risk management through the involvement of the general public into it. The objective of this paper is to present the results from assessing the preparedness for the disasters in the Slovak Republic with an emphasis on the changing climate and environment (from population perspective). The research is based on the exploration of the questionnaire survey's results aimed at investigating the preparedness and preventive proactive behaviour of the population against the disasters. The results suggest that the disaster risk awareness and overall disaster preparedness level is rather poor and the population is inactive. The proactive behaviour of the respondents against the disasters is partially affected by some of their personality and socio-economic characteristics; especially, the younger respondents currently incline more toward adopting the protective measures. In addition, other aspects, e.g. the negative experience with the disasters in the past have an influence on the preparedness. The possibilities of increasing the preparedness of the population and their engagement into sustainable disaster risk management system are also discussed in this paper.