Understanding Disaster Preparedness Level in the South Indian City of Chennai

Abstract

Understanding and developing frameworks to quantify disaster preparedness levels is the first step that should be taken in the process of building a disaster-resilient society. This paper presents the use of Disaster Preparedness Index Tool to assess the preparedness level of each and every individual to face an impending natural disaster. It is a survey-based tool to analyze the preparedness indices of the respondents over psychological and various social factors. The Disaster Preparedness Index (DPI) is a valid and reliable tool that assess individuals on a three-level scale with index values ranging between 0–14. An attempt was made to quantify disaster preparedness of the South Indian city of Chennai by the application of the developed Disaster Preparedness Index Tool and the disaster mindset of the residents of the city was studied. The influence factors like psychological mindset and socio-economic conditions over the levels of disaster preparedness were analyzed and presented in the paper. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.