Relevance of disaster awareness factors and evacuation experiment without emergency alarm: fire case study

PurposeThe lack of studies about the relevance of disaster awareness factors and disaster evacuation as a part of disaster responses especially for fire cases in an academic environment in Indonesia has triggered this study to explore the disaster awareness factors and evacuation experiment without emergency alarm for case study students in the classroom. The relevance of disaster awareness factors in transforming into practical action and decision in a disaster evacuation need to be examined to study the relevance of both phases in disaster.Design/methodology/approachThis research conducted a quantitative approach by studying questionnaires from 162 respondents collectively divided into five groups to examine the student disaster awareness factors randomly from those groups. The qualitative approach was implemented through the evacuation experiments that were conducted twice to analyze the disaster evacuation performance. The analysis for the relevance is conducted by comparing the result of the questionnaire study and the evacuation experiment.FindingsAccording to the questionnaire study, generally, the students are highly confident with their hazard knowledge in disaster awareness except that half of them are doubtful about appropriate steps in a disaster. The experiment without explosive sound showed that they have slower responses in the critical moment of evacuation. The response in the experiments showed relevance with several disaster awareness factorsResearch limitations/implicationsThis study has explored the relevance of disaster awareness factors with disaster response in a campus building. In the part of reducing risk during fire disaster, this research shows the importance of social interaction and hazard knowledge during the disaster.Practical implicationsThe improvement of disaster evacuation procedures and training in a campus building is mandatory to reduce disaster risk based on the relevance of disaster awareness factors and disaster response in this study.Originality/valueThis study measures the relevance of disaster awareness factors performance of the students by comparing it to their actions and decisions in an experimental setting of fire building. The disaster awareness factor performance was measured by a questionnaire survey while the experiments were deployed to observe the performance of their actions and decisions during evacuation as part of the disaster response phase.