Direct public engagement of the disaster management agency in Meranti Islands Regency in responding to peatland disasters

Abstract

Disaster studies are interesting studies that will always require dynamic changes, but local governments must be able to provide good policies. With system replication, disasters are downstream but must be accompanied by upstream problems which become the basis for being resolved early. With the policy of separating government affairs in responding to public problems, between the central government and regional governments, the public administration system will be better. The locus of analysis in this article is the Meranti Islands Regency in Riau Province, where almost more than 70% of its territory is peat area. From 1998 until its peak in 2015, the supporting factors were the climate which caused long droughts, and also the habitual pattern of burning land which caused forest and land fires in peat areas that were difficult to extinguish, resulting in a haze disaster that spread to neighboring countries, namely Malaysia and Singapore. Based on this experience, the regional government replicated the application-based satellite system public service innovation to detect disaster points, with the hope of being more responsive so that it can respond earlier to disasters in Meranti Islands Regency. The Regional Disaster Management Agency (BPBD) of Meranti Islands Regency realizes that geographically it is difficult to reach disaster points in this region because this district consists of several islands and access to reach these areas takes quite a long time.