Earthquake Risk Perception and Community Resilience in Peshawar

Abstract

Introduction: Disasters around the world are increasing in number which are impacting human’s lives in a negative way. Communities need to be made resilient to withstand the impacts of disasters. In order to work on resilience of communities against the harmful impacts of disasters, the level of resilience of a particular community and the risk perception of its people is crucial to find out. Risk perception of the people of a particular community directly tells us about how resilient they are. Peshawar holds a very important place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, being its capital. It is hit by many earthquakes in the past. It is likely to get hit by more earthquakes in the future. Objective: This paper attempts to find out the earthquake risk perception of people of Peshawar in terms of earthquake hazard and thus the resilience of the city Peshawar to earthquake. In order to lessen the impacts of such earthquakes, this paper concludes the risk perception and resilience of its people. Methods: this research is carried out using simple random sampling technique. Peshawar is divided into 4 towns, town 1, town 2, town 3, and town 4. In each town, surveys are made through semi structure questionnaires, which are composed of questions that are formulated, keeping in mind a few components that are social, economic, physical, and institutional. These components are further divided into indicators. These components are extracted from studying literature of past similar studies. Results: The composite index revealed risk perception and resilience of people in all four towns. The difference between all towns was not significant nor were the results significant but town 1 and 3 had higher earthquake risk perception index and resilience index than town 2 and 4. The level of education of people, building type, age, income and similar indicators showed different results. For example, people with high education had greater risk perception. People with houses that are made using engineering methods were considered more resilient. None the less, risk perception and resilience cannot be calculated to 100% accuracy but this study enlightened us to a greater extent about Peshawar city. Recommendations: Recommendations were made to increase risk perception and resilience of people through awareness campaigns, educating the people, income generating activities, using engineering techniques in building houses and structures etc.