Towards sustainable cities and communities: Is psychological preparedness include in the disaster risk reduction policy framework in Indonesia

Abstract

Indonesia geographical location that surrounded by Australia plate, Pacific plate, and Eurasia plate has made the country exposed to disasters. Natural hazard that often happen in Indonesia are flood, volcanic eruption, earthquake, landslide, land fire, cyclone, extreme wave. The impact of disaster was devastating economically, socially and psychologically for affected community as well for the whole nation. Indonesia National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has noted that average losses caused by disaster is 30 trillion rupiah per year. Studies found that preparing individual to face disaster could help to reduce the impact of the disaster. However, the effort is still not enough and yet Indonesia is still suffering a great loss due to disasters. The disaster preparedness program that was available was mostly focused in technically prepare people and neglect the importance of psychologically prepare people to face disaster. The purpose of the study is to analyse current disaster risk reduction policy framework in Indonesia, examine whether the current policy framework has address and includes psychological preparedness for disaster and propose a solution for designing appropriate policy to reduce psychological impact of disaster.