Vulnerability assessment for disaster risk management: A case study of floods in Centini Village, Indonesia
Creators: name: Pamungkas, Adjie
Publisher: name: RMIT University
Year: 2024

description: While the need to move beyond reactive adaptations for disaster risk management is well established, the benefits of a more integrative, proactive framework need to be assessed in terms of community vulnerability. Dynamic system modelling is a valuable tool for integrating concepts of vulnerability, resilience and adaptation and understanding the relationships among them for the purpose of reducing future vulnerability levels. This thesis presents an approach to assessing community vulnerability levels as well as evaluating the effectiveness of proactive adaptations to enhance community resilience both under current conditions and under future climate change scenarios.<br>I undertook a case study in Centini Village, East Java Province, which is one of the poorest villages in Indonesia and is exposed to both annual floods and occasional extreme floods. A community vulnerability model under current conditions (base model) was constructed using data from Delphi Technique (with 18 stakeholders), secondary surveys and semi-structured interviews (with 11 key informants). Twenty nine vulnerability factors were identified to direct the processes of model building. The base model consists of seven sub models representing flood, victims, housing, responses, income, expenditure and savings. I also developed two main scenarios of adaptations based on 1) eight current adaptations, which are predominantly reactive and 2) eleven proactive adaptations, which are classified into three main groups of spatial plan implementation, economic development program and proactive community actions. Those adaptations are assessed to minimise three indicators of vulnerability (Victims, Damage/Losses and Recovery). In predicting flood characteristics under future climate change scenarios, I modified the base model using rainfall data predicted for 2040-2060 using the GFDLCM2.0 model, as the best-fit General Circulation Model (GCM) for my case study.<br>Outputs from the base model reveal that the community has a high level of vulnerability to flood. Floods have a major impact on villagers resulting in greater levels of poverty in the community. Model outputs also indicate that current reactive adaptations are not adequate in reducing vulnerability levels. After applying proactive adaptations to the model, reforestation of the upper catchment and flood infrastructure redevelopment emerge as the most effective approaches for decreasing all indicators of vulnerability as well as enhancing community resilience. Other adaptations have significant effects in decreasing selected sub indicators of vulnerability, including improving the quality of the municipal disaster unit, promoting better house construction, insurance mechanism and cash transfer program. Under a future climate change scenario, without improved adaptations, the village will face substantially greater impacts from floods particularly increases in the number of deaths, evacuated villagers, major damaged houses, number of weeks of evacuation for villagers and average savings. The influences of proactive adaptations on community vulnerability levels in the base model under current conditions are different compared with the model under a climate change scenario. Reforestation is still the most effective adaptation. However, flood infrastructure redevelopment will no longer be an effective solution as the flood level will often overwhelm the infrastructure and the risk of collapse will pose a serious threat. For selected sub indicators, strengthening the municipal disaster board emerges as an effective adaptation to reduce the number of villagers with chronic diseases, number of weeks for villagers with chronic disease and economic losses for middle income families.<br>This study demonstrates the value of using decision support systems, such as system dynamic analysis, in assessing vulnerability for disaster risk management, both under current and future scenarios. The model presented here also demonstrates a method for integrating vulnerability, resilience and adaptations under the umbrella of disaster risk management. The results of the case study highlight the need for an integrated approach to implementing proactive adaptations, requiring coordination of multiple aspects of public policy. Furthermore, the effectiveness of including stakeholder inputs in the development and validation of the model was demonstrated. The recommendations presented here have the potential to reduce community vulnerability to floods in Centini Village. With some adjustment, the method used in this thesis has the potential to improve disaster risk management in other locations or hazard types with different types of proactive adaptations.<br>