Disaster Resilience Assessment Of Community: Development Of Disaster Preparedness Curriculum For Training Of NGO And Community

Abstract

In recent years, community disaster resilience has been identified as one of the most important mitigation processes and advocated as an approach to disaster risk management. More actions should be taken to achieve resiliency towards disaster, and factors associated with it should be identified. Each community is unique, and different approaches should be implemented to fit the needs and respective cultures. A cross-sectional community-based study was carried out in Gua Musang, Kelantan, in villages where flooding occurs yearly. Convenience sampling was chosen to maximize the responses from the participants. 400 participants aged 18 and above who understood Bahasa Malaysia were recruited for the face-to-face guided interview using a modified translated questionnaire. The questionnaire covers four dimensions of community resilience: connectedness, risk/vulnerability, available resources, and planning and procedures. Results showed that the majority of the participants scored falls in the caution zone for connectedness (54%), risk/vulnerability (82.9%), procedure (50%), resources (69.3%) and overall scores (97.5%). Chi-square test results reflected that there were significant differences in overall resilience level within a race (p=0.033), occupation (0.048), education level (p=0.001) and age (p=0.001) but not significant for gender, income and marital status (p>0.05). The resilience level in the studied population was found to be moderate, and a suitable educational programme should be implemented to increase the level of disaster resiliency regarding the identified factors.