Understanding Functional Earthquake Readiness: Development and preliminary validation of earthquake readiness measures and predictors

Natural processes (e.g. seismic, volcanic etc.) become natural hazards when their actions threaten people and/or what they value; be it human life, animals or infrastructure. A significant influence on whether a hazard event becomes a disaster (i.e. exceeds community/societal capacity to absorb or respond to impacts) is readiness. Readiness has been defined in a variety of ways by previous researchers including undertaking ‘survival actions’ such as collecting water and food, undertaking ‘structural actions’ such as retrofitting a building to
prevent damage in a disaster, learning survival skills, undertaking planning, and performing social actions. Given the diversity of ways in which the term ‘readiness’ can be interpreted it is clear that a better understanding is needed of what readiness means to people. This study explored whether readiness, usually measured as a variable comprising homogenous items, actually comprises of several distinct, but related categories. How people think about and categorise hazard readiness has important implications for understanding why some people
and communities are prepared for hazards and others are not. A better understanding of how people interpret readiness can also assist with identifying relevant interventions that encourage future preparedness in populations.