Community Education and Preparedness for Disaster Risk Reduction

Abstract

Disasters, which are rapidly increasing worldwide, have negative consequences due to the social, economic, and environmental impacts they create. Thus, disasters constitute a significant agenda due to their significant disruption of societal functioning and the inability of affected communities to cope with the adverse consequences by using their own resources. For sustainable and risk-informed development, engagement of all actors effectively in disaster risk reduction processes is of vital importance. Community involvement is central to these processes, thereby, devising methods to increase risk perception and developing positive outcome expectancy, self- and community efficacy, and skills for preparedness in communities are considered essential for strengthening risk reduction efforts. In this context, accompanied by investments in community education activities to foster necessary cognitions and behaviors for preparedness, it is also important to specifically target community engagement in disaster preparedness as part of disaster risk management. This chapter will focus on various theoretical models for disaster preparedness and research outcomes related to community education and engagement as well as provide a discussion of methods for the training of community members.