KESIAP SIAGAAN MASYARAKAT DALAM PENANGGULANGAN BANJIR DI KOTA SEMARANG

Abstract

Flood disaster, by number and economic losses, account for about a third of all natural catastrophes throughout the
world. Semarang, as a waterfront city has been suffering from floods since historic time. This research aims to capture
people’s perception and response to two different kind of flood. The study focused to identify and analyze community
response and its relation to their knowledge, preparedness and action level. An exploratory case study based on
primary and secondary data. The primary data were collected through observational study, questionnaires, semi
structured interviews, and FGDs. A sample size of 128 was chosen based on purposive sampling methods. The findings
of the study indicated that people in the coastal areas have a high level of knowledge about floods (64%). This
knowledge is comparatively high on amount of their past experiences of floods; however they lack in preparedness
(43%) because most of the residents are fishermen who have low income so they could not must much effort to adapt
their building to flood. On the other hand, people in the inland, they lack in knowledge (18%) because flood is
comparatively recent in their area; but they have a good level of preparedness (24%) because they belong to high and
middle level income strata. Furthermore, both communities in the coastal area and inland have a high level of action
because of a high knowledge and experience for coastal residents and a good preparedness for inland residents. This
research leads to recommendation to improve the adaptive capacity of the people to cope with the floods. The
recommendation is to develop Community-based Disaster Education (CBDE) Framework with the main purpose is to
increase community knowledge about disaster and to enhance community resilience to flood.