Citation

Pereira SM, Rego IE, Mónico LSM. Int. J. Disaster Risk Reduct. 2023; 96: e103966.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2023, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.ijdrr.2023.103966

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Societies capable of dealing with disasters such as earthquakes require prepared residents. Preparedness is a dynamic decision-making process comprising the development of knowledge, skills, and actions and the mobilisation of resources to deal with and recover from a disaster. To prepare, residents must be familiar with the information that is disseminated by governments and civil protection authorities. Despite the vast literature on preparedness, research analysing earthquake preparedness and response recommendations in Europe is rare. This study fills this gap by applying a qualitative approach with realist thematic analysis, including deductive and inductive coding, to analyse official earthquake recommendations from European countries exposed to seismic risk and identify similarities and differences between research and policy. Eighty-four documents/texts on websites from 25 countries were analysed, and four themes and 17 subthemes were identified. The results show that recommendations conform to the definition of hazard adjustments and thus comprise mitigation activities. Overall, the results agree with the literature and often extend it, detailing activities and identifying measures that are absent or scarcely mentioned in the literature. Earthquake recommendations focus on physical protection and include the psychological and social aspects of preparedness. However, the recommendations comprise measures that lack supporting scientific evidence. These results can contribute to the general concept of preparedness by adding practical meanings of earthquake preparedness and response and to the understanding of seismic household preparedness and response. Furthermore, they can contribute to a discussion of the impact of research on practical applications and to the identification of new research paths.

Language: en

Keywords

Coding methodology; Earthquake preparedness; Earthquake response; Hazard adjustments; Official earthquake recommendations