ORI GIN AL PA PER

Testing the use of a ‘questionnaire survey instrument’to investigate public perceptions of tsunami hazardand risk in Sydney, Australia

Deanne Bird Æ Dale Dominey-Howes

Received: 21 December 2006 / Accepted: 24 July 2007 / Published online: 6 November 2007� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2007

Abstract The Indian Ocean tsunami (IOT) of December 2004 has demonstrated that the

coasts of Australia are vulnerable to tsunami flooding. As a consequence of the IOT, the

Australian Federal Treasurer announced in 2005 that the Bureau of Meteorology and

Geoscience Australia will jointly develop and implement the Australian Tsunami Warning

System. Effective response to tsunami warnings is highly dependent on public awareness

and perception of tsunami hazard and risk. At present, no efforts have been made to

investigate and publish public awareness of tsunami hazard and risk and as such, emer-

gency managers have little idea of the likely challenges to effecting appropriate tsunami

risk management. We develop a short questionnaire survey instrument and trial that

instrument in order to investigate its suitability for generating information about the per-

ceptions of tsunami hazard and risk in the Sydney region. We found that the design, layout

and format of the questionnaire were suitable for our purpose and should be useful for

generating information appropriate to emergency management agencies tasked with the

responsibility of developing tsunami education campaigns and risk mitigation strategies in

Australia. However, certain limitations, such as individual question design and format,

should be considered before a much larger survey of various stakeholders is conducted.

Keywords Tsunami risk � Sydney � Public perception � Risk mitigation �Questionnaire survey instrument � Questionnaire structure

D. Bird (&)Department of Physical Geography, Macquarie University, North Ryde,Sydney, NSW 2109, Australiae-mail: dbird@els.mq.edu.au

D. Dominey-HowesRisk Management Research Group, School of Safety Science, University of New South Wales,Sydney 2052, Australiae-mail: dale.dh@unsw.edu.au

123

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122DOI 10.1007/s11069-007-9172-8

1 Introduction and aims

The Indian Ocean tsunami (IOT) disaster of December 2004 was significant not just

because of the number of lives lost but because it demonstrated that large, regionally

destructive tsunami are not confined to the Pacific Ocean. For countries with coastal

landscape areas bordering the Indian Ocean (including Australia), the effects of the IOT

provided a stark ‘wake-up call’ concerning the actual threat posed by tsunami—a hazard

not fully realised until now.

As a consequence of the IOT, the Australian Federal Treasurer announced in 2005

that the Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) and Geoscience Australia (GA) would jointly

develop and implement the Australian Tsunami Warning System (ATWS) (Geoscience

Australia 2005). GA and the BoM will co-ordinate the detection of tsunamigenic

events, monitor tsunami as they approach Australia and undertake forecast assess-

ments of probable tsunami impacts (Greenslade et al. 2007). These agencies will

evaluate what type (if any) of information and/or warning messages should be issued.

When required, the BoM will release initial warning messages to State or Territory

emergency service organisations and the media through the Bureau’s regional offices.

Messages will also be passed to EMA’s National Emergency Management Coordi-

nation Centre (NEMCC) (Sullivan 2006). Where required, the BoM Regional Offices

will issue detailed warning messages to the SES and the public. Meaningful public

response to any evacuation order is partly dependent on the clarity and accuracy of

those orders; the time available prior to tsunami arrival; the efficiency of the coor-

dinating emergency services and significantly, upon the public’s understanding and

perception of (tsunami) hazard and risk (Hurnen and McClure 1997; Johnston and

Benton 1998; Anderson-Berry 2003; Dominey-Howes and Minos-Minopoulos 2004;

Johnston et al. 2005). Therefore, having a clear understanding of the public’s

awareness and perception of tsunami is a vital element in developing hazard education

programmes and risk management procedures (Hurnen and McClure 1997; Johnston

and Benton 1998; Gough and Hooper 2003). In order to obtain information about

what the public understands in relation to a particular hazard type, it is necessary to

design and execute appropriate information gathering techniques such as questionnaire

surveys (McGuirk and O’Neill 2005; Parfitt 2005).

In light of the introduction, the aims of this article are to:

(1) Provide a short overview of the tsunami hazard and risk to, and exposure within, the

Sydney region, Australia;

(2) Briefly review the importance of public awareness and perception of hazard and

risk and consider the role of education in the mitigation of risk and

vulnerability;

(3) Develop a short questionnaire survey instrument and trial that instrument in order to

investigate its suitability for generating information about the perceptions of tsunami

hazard and risk in the Sydney region;

(4) Report the findings of this trial; and to,

(5) Consider the significance of our results to future studies of tsunami risk in

Australia and the emergency management community and make recommenda-

tions to improve our understanding of public awareness of tsunami hazard and

risk.

100 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

2 Identifying tsunami hazard, risk and exposure in the Sydney coastal region

Tsunami affecting Australia since European occupation have all been rather small, causing

little in the way of damage (Risk Frontiers 1995; Rynn and Davidson 1999; Dominey-

Howes 2007). In contrast, geological research since the late 1980’s suggests that the coast

of SE Australia has been repeatedly impacted by palaeo-(prehistoric) tsunami—some of

them very large (Bryant 2001; Bryant and Nott 2001; Bryant and Young 1996; Bryant

et al. 1992a, b; Kelletat and Scheffers 2003; Nott 1997, 2003a, b, 2004; Young and Bryant

1992; Young et al. 1995, 1996). In fact, Bryant and Nott (2001) report tsunami flood

heights south of Sydney to heights in excess of 100 m above sea level (m asl) with waves

sweeping as much as 10 km inland.

Whilst much more research needs to be conducted on the evidence for the reported

palaeo-tsunami in order to increase our confidence in their occurrence and likely effects

(Dominey-Howes 2007; Dominey-Howes et al. 2006), it is at least clear that historic

tsunami have inundated the eastern seaboard (Rynn and Davidson 1999). Work by Gu-

siakov (2005) is useful in defining regions within the Pacific that can generate tsunami

potentially damaging to eastern Australia. Gusiakov examined the total number of earth-

quakes with a magnitude of Ms C 7.0 and a depth h \ 100 km that occurred within the

Pacific basin between 1901 and 2000. He then compared these events with those that

generated a tsunami. This allowed him to calculate a Tsunami Efficiency ratio (TE%) for

each tsunamigenic region. Gusiakov’s tsunamigenic regions of the Pacific are shown in

Fig. 1. The TE% ratios are shown in Table 1.

South America is the region most efficient at generating tsunami (followed by Indonesia

and the Philippines). New Zealand–Tonga and the Kuril–Kamchatka regions are least

efficient at generating tsunami. There are however, two significant limitations to using

these data. First, the analysis of events between 1901 and 2000 do not adequately reflect

the total cumulative tsunami risk for that period because the tsunamigenic events only

relate to earthquakes and do not include other mechanisms such as volcanic eruptions and

submarine sediment slides (Dominey-Howes and Keating 2005). Second, the approach

used by Gusiakov may not properly reflect the long-term earthquake-tsunami risk (i.e.

longer than 100 year period) within different regions of the Pacific because his analysis is

only based on a short time series of data from 1901 to 2000. It may be that over longer time

periods, other geographic regions dominate in terms of their tsunamigenic recurrence.

However, at the present time, the work of Gusiakov (2005) is the most comprehensive (and

publicly available) analysis of tsunamigenicity in the Pacific so we use his ‘tsunamigenic

regions’ in our study. Table 2 details return periods of tsunami for selected areas around

the Pacific. From Fig. 1 and Tables 1 and 2, it is apparent that Sydney is at risk from

tsunami generated in many of these regions—particularly those across the Pacific. Indeed,

the 1960 Chile tsunami and the 1964 Alaska tsunami both affected the NSW coast

including Sydney generating wave heights at shore of more than 1 m (Opper and Gissing

2005; Dominey-Howes 2007).

Approximately 330,000 people in New South Wales live within 1 km of the ocean or a

coastal river and at an elevation of no more than 10 m asl (Molino Stewart 2005; Chen and

McAneney 2006). More than 20% of these people are over the age of 65 years (Opper and

Gissing 2005). Within the Greater Sydney region specifically, there are a total of

*2.5 million addresses (residential, commercial, industrial etc) and of these, 46,000 are

located\1 km from the coastline and at an elevation of\3 m asl (Fig. 2) (Risk Frontiers

2005; Chen and McAneney 2006). Whilst these 46,000 addresses are not uniformly

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 101

123

vulnerable to tsunami damage (Papathoma and Dominey-Howes 2003; Papathoma et al.

2003; Dominey-Howes and Papathoma 2007), they do at least represent what is ‘exposed’

to tsunami inundation and damage.

3 Public awareness of hazard in risk communication and education

The physical occurrence of a tsunami cannot be prevented, but a tsunami disaster can be.

Disaster management comprises a variety of elements that are undertaken before, during

and after a (tsunami) disaster event. These elements are illustrated in Fig. 3. Embedded

within and central to the disaster management cycle, is communicating with and educating

the public and others about tsunami hazard, risk, vulnerability and disaster preparedness

(Kurita et al. 2006). Risk communication is undertaken to persuade people, formally or

informally, to adopt self-protective behaviours and practices. Residents exposed to a

tsunami threat need to be well informed about the various types of risk management and

mitigation procedures available to them (Rohrmann 2003).

Fig. 1 The epicentres of tsunamigenic earthquakes that occurred in the Pacific between 1981 and 1997 arerepresented by the circles. The size of the circle indicates the magnitude of the earthquake and colourvariation denotes intensity. Based on the clustering of these events, Gusiakov (2005) identified what hereferred to as ‘tsunamigenic regions’ of the Pacific. The boundaries of these regions are shown in black.Whilst this figure only shows earthquake events between 1981 and 1997, the regions were based on a muchlonger record of events from 1900 to 2000. The regions are: Alaska–Aleutians (A–A), Central America(CAM), South America (SAM), New Zealand–Tonga (NZT), New Guinea–Solomon Islands (NGS),Indonesia (IND), Philippines (PHI), Japan (JAP), Kuril–Kamchatka (K–K) and Hawai’i (HAW) (afterGusiakov 2005)

102 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

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Risk communication and education may take several forms but education through the

school curriculum and effective home-based preparedness are closely linked (Johnston

et al. 2005). For example, a risk perception and preparedness survey conducted by Ronan

et al. (2001) on school children revealed that those who had been involved in hazard

education programs displayed more stable risk perceptions, reduced hazard-related fears

and demonstrated an increased awareness of important hazard-related protective behav-

iours compared to non hazard-educated children. Following hazard education, children are

likely to interact and educate their parents on hazard issues, in turn, increasing home-based

preparedness (Ronan et al. 2001; Johnston et al. 2005). The importance of hazard edu-

cation in schools was highlighted in Thailand during the 2004 IOT when a 10-year-old

British girl saved hundreds of lives by recognising the on-coming tsunami because of the

recession of coastal water from Phuket beach—a clear physical sign of a tsunami which

she had learnt about at school (King and Gurtner 2005).

Table 1 Total number of earthquakes (EQ) (Ms C 7.0 and depth, h \ 100 km) and tsunami (TS) in eachregion (between 1901 and 2000), and the tsunami generating efficiency (TE%) of these earthquakes (afterGusiakov 2005)

Region Earthquake(EQ)

Tsunami(TS)

Tsunami efficiency(TE) %

South America 122 102 84

Indonesia 86 68 79

Philippines 73 55 75

New Guinea–Solomon Islands 130 86 64

Central America 112 62 55

Japan 255 123 48

Alaska–Aleutians 108 49 46

Kuril–Kamchatka 150 68 45

New Zealand–Tonga 162 62 38

Hawaiia 3 13 100

a Hawai’i has experienced many locally generated tsunami but only three far-field tsunami of earthquakeorigin, which skews the data. The TE is 100% which says little about the efficiency of earthquake generatingtsunami in the Hawai’i region

Table 2 Tsunami frequency/recurrence intervals for selected geographic regions based upon the publishedliterature (after Dominey-Howes and Keating 2005)

Region Tsunami frequency Reference

Kamchatka 1 large event per 1,000 yearsor 1 event every 30 years

Pinegina et al. (2003)

Chile 1 large event every 200 years Salgado et al. (2003)

Cairns, Australia 1 event every 600 years Nott (1997)

Japan 1 major event every 500 years Nanayama et al. (2003)

Hawai’i 1 event every 30 years Dudley and Lee (1998)

Cascadia, NW USA 6 major events in 3,000 years Hutchinson and McMillan (1997)

Note: For Kamchatka, Chile, Australia and Japan, the frequency is calculated from the records of near-field(local) tsunami only. For Hawai’i, the frequency is calculated from the records of both near-field and far-field tsunami

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 103

123

Fig. 3 Key elements of the disaster management cycle (with special reference to tsunami)

Greater SydneyRegion(Sydney Basin,Central Coast and South Coast)

-

50,000

100,000

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200,000

250,000

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Elevation (m)

Num

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of G

-NA

F ad

dres

ses

<1km

<2km

<3km

Fig. 2 Total number of addresses (Geo-coded National Address File (G-NAF)) in the Greater Sydneyregion \1 km, \2 km and \3 km from the coastline and by elevation above sea level. Note that the totalnumber of addresses is cumulative. At +10 m above sea level there are approximately 190,000 addresses\1 km from the shore; 220,000 \2 km from the shore and 240,000 \3 km from the shore (after RiskFrontiers 2005)

104 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

Outside of the school system, increasing hazard awareness and knowledge may be

achieved through media activities such as television, radio and internet campaigns, and via

the distribution of information leaflets, brochures, posters and videos, and public infor-

mation meetings. Schutz and Wiedemann (2000) found that providing risk information to

the public had a positive influence on hazard knowledge and resulted in an increase of

public trust in risk mitigation and planning competence. They also suggest that risk

information should be provided to a community at least once every 3 years, to ensure risk

knowledge does not decrease. This is important because public ignorance and complacency

can increase in relation to long intervals between successive hazard events. This was

demonstrated in a study conducted by Johnston et al. (2005) on tsunami preparedness in

coastal Washington in the USA. Johnston et al. found that despite distributing tsunami

information through several media, erecting tsunami warning and evacuation signs, and

providing maps and public displays illustrating tsunami inundation zones, levels of pre-

paredness within the resident community were recorded at ‘‘low to moderate’’.

Given the importance of tsunami risk education, we now outline the development of a

‘questionnaire survey instrument’ in order to investigate to what degree members of the

public within the Greater Sydney metropolitan region are aware of tsunami hazard and risk.

Once the survey instrument is defined, we report the results of a trial of this instrument and

the responses generated from this pilot investigation. We then comment on the usefulness

and validity of using a questionnaire survey instrument and discuss the significance of our

participants’ responses.

4 Development of questionnaire survey instrument

There are many techniques available to social scientists to enable them to investigate

public perceptions of hazard and risk. We chose to trial a questionnaire survey instrument

in this study in order to gauge its usefulness in providing information about public per-

ceptions of risk that might be relevant to policy and decision makers and emergency

management agencies. The use of such questionnaire instruments to investigate public

perception of a range of hazard types is becoming increasingly common (Dibben and

Chester 1999; Rohrmann 1999; Anderson-Berry 2003; Dominey-Howes and Minos-

Minopoulos 2004; Johnston et al. 2005; Parfitt 2005; Spittal et al. 2005; Kurita et al.

2006). Face-to-face interviews were determined to be the most effective mode of

distributing the questionnaire as questions were able to be clarified, vague responses could

be queried, and a higher response rate with more detailed responses through verbal

communication as compared to written communication could be obtained (Table 3). We

believe that the strengths of this approach far outweigh the weaknesses particularly when

testing the use of a questionnaire survey with a small sample size (McGuirk and O’Neill

2005; Parfitt 2005).

In order to determine whether a questionnaire instrument is appropriate to the task for

which it has been designed, trialling of the instrument should be undertaken with at least 20

participants (Parfitt 2005). We trialled our questionnaire instrument with 30 participants,

all aged 18 years and above, during October and November 2005. Thus, we have exceeded

the minimum number of ‘dry runs’ which should enable us to determine how useful our

questionnaire instrument is. Aspects of a questionnaire that should be considered during

the trialling process are outlined in Table 4.

Here we describe the structure of the questionnaire and the selection of the specific

questions used, and we explain how the survey was conducted.

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 105

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106 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

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Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 107

123

4.1 Selection of questions and structure of the questionnaire

In line with other surveys concerned with the public understanding of hazard and risk, we

collected classification data about our participants. Such data included age, level of edu-

cation and how far participants live from the coast. We then developed a series of questions

designed to gauge the participants specific awareness and understanding of what tsunami

are, their causes, the regions from which tsunami might originate, their likely impacts and

effects, whether or not participants are aware of any warning systems, and finally, how

important participants believe tsunami are in comparison to other natural hazards that

affect the Sydney region. Some of the questions allowed for an open-ended response in

order to gain qualitative data on the participant’s knowledge and perceptions. Other

questions sought quantitative data for easy analysis and interpretation. To avoid restricting

or guiding responses to closed questions with an ordinal selection, the option ‘other, pleasespecify’ was offered where applicable. A copy of the entire questionnaire is provided in the

Appendix. However, only selected questions will be analysed in this article.

4.2 Undertaking the trial questionnaire survey

We conducted face-to-face interviews with permanent residents only. We restricted our

study to permanent residents since local authorities and emergency management organi-

sations will owe a duty of care to their primary stakeholders in the first instance, and we

wished to make the investigation as straight forward as possible. Within this group of

permanent residents we included Local Government professional officers. These

Table 4 Aspects of a questionnaire that should be considered during the trial process

Aspect Description Reference

Question designand format

• Were the questions understoodby the participants?

Campbell and Machin (2000), Kitchin and Tate(2000), Collin (2003), Punch (2003), Fehilyand Johns (2004), McGuirk and O’Neill(2005), Parfitt (2005)

• Do any questions need rewording?

• Should any questions be omittedfrom the survey?

• Were the questions sequenced inan appropriate manner?

• Did any questions require the useof prompts?

Questionnairelength

• How long did the interviews take? Kitchin and Tate (2000), Collin (2003),Punch (2003), Fehily and Johns (2004),McGuirk and O’Neill (2005), Parfitt (2005)

• Was the length appropriate for theparticipants?

Questionnaireoutput

• Was the data recorded in anappropriate format for analysis?

Campbell and Machin (2000), Kitchinand Tate (2000), Collin (2003), Fehilyand Johns (2004), McGuirk and O’Neill(2005), Parfitt (2005)

• Was the coding scheme appropriatefor multiple responses?

Classificationquestions

• Were any problems encounteredwith the classification questions?

Altman (1991), Kitchin and Tate (2000),Parfitt (2005)

• Is the classification data necessaryfor the analysis?

Aims of thesurvey

• Did the questionnaire fulfil theaims of the investigation?

Kitchin and Tate (2000), Collin (2003),McGuirk and O’Neill (2005)

108 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

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participants hold positions in environmental, engineering and risk insurance related fields.

We sought the awareness and perceptions of this ‘captive group’ because we expected that

they would have a high level of tsunami awareness because of their professional duties and

responsibilities.

Our participants were recruited through a purposive ‘snow-ball’ sampling technique

where potential participants were suggested by personal acquaintances that had an interest

in the region and hazard, i.e. only local residents and professional officers living in Sydney.

We contacted these potential participants by telephone in order to (1) confirm their will-

ingness to participate and (2) that they were indeed a permanent resident of Sydney. Once

these parameters were confirmed, we agreed a date, time and place in which to undertake

the questionnaire interview. The Local Government professional officers were recruited to

the study via direct approach from the Executive Secretariat of the Sydney Coastal

Councils Group (SCCG) who facilitated introductions for us. All participants were required

to sign Human Ethics approvals and were provided with information about the nature and

purpose of the study.

5 Results

We divide our results in to two sections. First we describe our experience of conducting

the questionnaire survey paying attention to problems and challenges that arose during the

interview process. Second we present a short summary of our actual findings of the

public’s understanding of hazard and risk.

5.1 Use of the questionnaire instrument

In general, the questionnaire took 20–30 min to complete which was in line with partic-

ipants’ expectations and acceptable to them. During the interviews, we encountered no

problems with regard to the design, format and layout of the questionnaire. However, some

questions did require some clarification from us. For example, we had to provide better

definitions of some terminology for tsunamigenic mechanisms and had to explain what was

meant by the importance of tsunami in comparison to other hazards in Sydney. Addi-

tionally, we found that we were leading the participants by providing them with the

answers to the different tsunamigenic mechanisms.

The questionnaire was relatively straightforward and did not require significant coding

of answers during the analysis phase. The only difficulty that arose with respect to the

classification data was the need to provide a map for participants to determine how far they

lived from the coast.

Due to the purposive sampling technique all participants had an interest in the topic and

therefore, there was no non-response error. However, one participant did not answer a

question due to a lack of knowledge. This question was handled as a ‘‘don’t know’’

response and therefore is included in our analysis.

5.2 Results of the trial questionnaire survey

Table 5 provides a quick look summary of our participants’ key characteristics derived

from questions 1, 3 and 8 whilst Table 6 provides a summary of their responses to

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 109

123

questions 10, 12, 13, 17, 20, 23, 24 and 26–33. Additionally, participant responses to

questions 11, 16, 19 and 25 will be presented.

It can be seen that the age distribution of our participants is fairly even and 37% live

B2 km from the coast. Furthermore, 67% have a bachelor and/or higher degree qualifi-

cation. Our participants are ‘well educated’—10 of the council officers and 10 of the

general public hold university level qualifications. Since we only trialled the questionnaire

with a ‘modest’ sample group and our participants are rather homogenous (i.e. well edu-

cated), we have combined the results of both subsets into a single dataset for ease of

analysis rather than treat them separately.

About 83% of participants said that they had heard of tsunami prior to the 2004 IOT

although, their knowledge about tsunamigenic mechanisms was quite variable (Table 6).

More than 80% of participants believe that Sydney is at risk from future tsunami inun-

dation. Participants provided a wide variety of definitions for a tsunami, most stating that it

is ‘‘a huge wave’’ or ‘‘tidal wave’’ (Question 11). Other definitions included for example:

‘‘a natural disaster consisting of a series of waves’’, ‘‘mass of water displaced due to largeshock’’, ‘‘storm surge after a cyclone’’, ‘‘unnaturally large wave originating from tectonicactivity’’, and ‘‘movement of plates under the ocean creating a wave surge which escalatestowards the coast’’.

When the participants were prompted to look at the tsunamigenic regions shown in

Fig. 2 and listed in Question 16, 87% indicated that they believe New Zealand–Tonga is

the region most likely to generate a tsunami damaging to Sydney. None identified South

America. About 20% of the group thought they knew when the last significant tsunami to

affect Sydney occurred (which was actually in the 1960’s). A total of 17% (of the 20%)

cited the 1960’s and the remaining participants listed ‘‘before European settlement’’. Those

who correctly mentioned the 1960’s as the date of the last Sydney tsunami were over the

age of 51 years.

About 47% of participants believe that ‘‘death and injury of people’’ are likely to be the

greatest effects of a tsunami in Sydney (Question 19). Justifications included: ‘‘everythingelse can be built or replaced; can’t put a price on life’’, ‘‘a lot of people live in the lowlying zone; doubt if government will evacuate fast enough as people are not prepared’’,

‘‘loss of life is a stronger measure of danger than bricks and mortar’’ and ‘‘based on IndianOcean tsunami there was a mass loss of life which was very disturbing’’. Furthermore,

impacts on ‘‘critical infrastructure’’ and impacts on ‘‘lifelines’’ were each cited as likely to

have the greatest affect on Sydney following a tsunami. Those who stated ‘‘critical

Table 5 Quick-look summary of selected key characteristics of our participants

What is your age group?

18–30 years old 31–50 years old 51+ years old

33% 40% 27%

What is the highest level of education you have completed?

Year 10 Year 12 TAFE or TradeCert./Diploma

AdvancedDiploma

University Bachelorsdegree

Postgraduatequalification

3% 10% 7% 13% 17% 50%

How far from the coast do you live?

0 \ 2 km 2 \ 5 km 5 \ 10 km 10+ km

37% 7% 27% 30%

110 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

Tab

le6

Qu

ick

-lo

ok

sum

mar

yo

fso

me

spec

ific

surv

eyq

ues

tion

s

Qu

esti

on

Res

po

nse

Q.

10

Had

you

hea

rdo

fts

unam

ipri

or

toth

eIn

dia

nO

cean

tsunam

ion

Dec

ember

26

2004?

Yes

83%

No

17%

Q.

12

Wh

ich

of

the

foll

ow

ing

do

yo

uth

ink

can

gen

erat

ea

tsun

ami?

(Yo

um

aych

oo

seas

man

yas

yo

uli

ke)

Yes

No

•ea

rth

quak

e1

00

%0

%

•su

baq

ueo

us

vo

lcan

icer

up

tio

ns

87

%1

3%

•su

baq

ueo

us

sed

imen

tsl

ides

67

%3

3%

•m

eteo

rite

/ast

ero

idst

rik

es6

0%

40

%

•su

bae

rial

vo

lcan

icer

up

tio

ns

50

%5

0%

•su

bae

rial

sed

imen

tsl

ides

40

%6

0%

Q.

13

Do

you

thin

kth

eS

ydney

regio

nco

uld

be

affe

cted

by

ats

unam

i?Y

es83%

No

13%

Don’t

know

4%

Q.

17

Do

yo

uk

no

ww

hen

the

last

tsu

nam

iaf

fect

edth

eS

ydn

eyre

gio

n?

Yes

=2

0%

Ify

es,

wh

en?

Corr

ect

=1

7%

Q.

20

Do

you

know

whet

her

ats

unam

iw

arnin

gsy

stem

exis

tsfo

rth

eS

ydney

regio

n?

Yes

20%

No

33%

Don’t

know

47%

Q.

23

Ifyou

answ

ered

no

or

don’t

know

do

you

thin

kS

ydney

nee

ds

ats

unam

iw

arnin

gsy

stem

?Y

es75%

No

17%

Don’t

know

8%

Q.

24

Ifa

tsu

nam

iw

asto

stri

ke

the

Sy

dn

eyre

gio

nw

hat

do

yo

uth

ink

the

max

imu

mfl

oo

dh

eigh

tco

uld

be?

10

+m

=4

3%

Q.

26–33

Ho

ww

ould

you

rate

the

import

ance

of

tsunam

iri

skas

ahaz

ard

inS

ydney

com

par

edto

:Im

port

ant

•b

ush

fire

13

%

•d

rou

gh

t1

7%

•h

ail

sto

rm3

3%

•se

ver

ew

inds

43

%

•li

gh

tnin

gst

rik

e4

7%

•ri

ver

flo

od

43

%

•co

asta

lst

orm

flo

od

47

%

•ea

rth

quak

e6

0%

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 111

123

infrastructure’’ justified their views with qualifications such as: ‘‘hard to coordinateactivities’’, and ‘‘most difficult to replace and time consuming; vital for ensuring recov-ery’’. Whilst participants who stated ‘‘lifelines’’ said ‘‘long term carry on effects’’, ‘‘can’tsurvive without water and most of Sydney’s water is coastal’’ and ‘‘cause a lot of death andillness in people if sewer or water is out’’.

About 20% of the group indicated that they do know a tsunami warning system exists,

whereas 33% stated that there is no warning system and 47% do not know if a tsunami

warning system exists. Of the participants who stated that there is no tsunami warning

system or that they do not know, 75% believe Sydney does need a warning system whilst

17% do not. The remaining 8% were uncertain.

About 43% of participants think that the next tsunami to affect Sydney could have a

maximum run-up or flood height of more than 10 m asl and 97% believe the next tsunami

could affect Bondi (Question 25). Only 13% of participants believe that bushfire hazard is

just as important in the Sydney region as tsunami. Interestingly 60, 47 and 47% of par-

ticipants believe tsunami to be just as important as earthquake, coastal storm flood and

lightning strike respectively (Table 6).

6 Discussion and recommendations

Whilst our study represents the first analysis of perception of tsunami risk in Australia—

something that will likely be of interest to emergency management agencies, we do rec-

ognise that certain aspects of the questionnaire pose limitations. However, we feel that the

data generated are significant for two reasons: (1) the purpose of this study was to test the

use of a ‘questionnaire survey instrument’ as a means to investigate public perception of

tsunami hazard and (2) the ‘pattern’ of our findings are similar to other studies of hazard

perceptions (Dominey-Howes and Minos-Minopoulos 2004; Johnston et al. 2005) partic-

ularly, tsunami awareness (Kurita et al. 2006).

6.1 Discussion of the usefulness of the questionnaire survey instrument

Although we did not encounter any specific issues with the design, format and layout of the

questionnaire, it is clear that these aspects need to be carefully considered. A well-

structured questionnaire that flows from one topic to the next keeps the participant inter-

ested and avoids confusion. However, despite having a well-structured questionnaire, some

of our questions needed clarification whilst others appeared to lead our participants. For

example, confusion arose over the terminology used to describe tsunamigenic mechanisms.

This was overcome through clarification by the interviewer. Furthermore, we actually

listed all possible tsunamigenic mechanisms for the participants and simply asked if they

thought these processes might generate tsunami. We suspect that if we had merely asked,

‘‘what mechanisms generate tsunami?’’ participants would have scored much lower. As

such, we believe that the way in which we asked this question has given us a skewed

response rate. Future studies should try to avoid guiding participant responses.

We did not ask participants ‘why’ they think what they do. For example, we did not ask

them why they think Sydney is at risk from future tsunami inundation. We are therefore,

uncertain if it is because of the 2004 IOT media coverage or some other explanation.

Future research should incorporate the opportunity for participants to provide information

that justifies their views and knowledge, if they are willing to spend the extra time.

112 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

However, the researcher needs to carefully consider the length of the questionnaire and the

expected time commitment required from each participant. We found that 20 min was an

appropriate time commitment for most participants whilst others were willing to commit

more than 30 min.

We provided a map of the Sydney region to assist participants to think about which

areas they believe might be inundated during a tsunami. Whilst conducting the interviews

however, it became apparent that this map was also useful to our participants to enable

them to determine how far they live from the coast. The use of visual prompts is another

advantageous aspect of face-to-face interviews making our approach preferable to others

such as telephone interviews (Parfitt 2005).

Our sample size, although adequate for trialling a questionnaire, is insufficient for

drawing any solid conclusions based on participants’ responses and future work should

seek to encompass a much larger sample group. For example, if future research targeted the

population living within 1 km of the ocean or a coastal river and at an elevation of

\3 m asl (i.e. approximately 330,000 people) then based on Gomm (2004, p. 88) and

Raosoft, Inc (2004) a minimum sample size of 381–384 would be necessary. This is the

minimum sample size required to give a 5% margin of error with a confidence level of 95%

for a dichotomous variable. If more variables are added and/or responses need to be

analysed in classification classes then a larger sample size would be necessary (Gomm

2004, p. 89).

To add further depth to perception studies diverse populations can be targeted. For

example, school aged children could be interviewed to better understand the potential role

and effectiveness of curricula in delivering hazard education and mitigation strategies.

Furthermore, in iconic coastal areas of Australia like Bondi, large numbers of local and

international visitors utilise the environmental and social services provided by these

locations. Consequently, analysis of their perceptions should be undertaken so as to more

effectively integrate their needs in to future tsunami disaster planning. We suggest that

interviews should be conducted with other important ‘captive’ groups such as the State

Emergency Services, police, fire and ambulance services in order to investigate their level

of tsunami awareness since they will be on the front line of dealing with an emergency.

In order to be able to gauge whether perception of tsunami risk changes with time as a

consequence of government risk mitigation activities, it will be necessary to conduct

follow-up surveys at regular intervals and specifically after public education initiatives in

order to highlight those areas that require further attention.

The necessity to undertake such detailed surveys has become painfully clear following

the Solomon Islands tsunami of 2nd April 2007. This tsunami triggered the first Tsunami

Warning Alert for the eastern seaboard of Australia. The mechanics of the detection and

monitoring of the tsunami were highly effective. Whilst the Bureau of Meteorology issued

the Tsunami Bulletin very soon after the tsunami being triggered and the NSW State

Emergency Services’ State Tsunami Disaster Management Plan swung in to action, a lack

of public understanding and confusion about the warning alerts, combined with media

commentary resulted in significant confusion and public misunderstanding throughout

coastal New South Wales and Queensland (Sydney Morning Herald 2007).

6.2 Discussion of findings from our participants in the trial survey

The majority (63%) of our participants live more than 2 km from the coast. In Sect. 2 of

this article, we set the scene by describing exposure of people and addresses located less

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 113

123

than 1 km from the ocean. However, given that 63% of our participants live more than

2 km from the coast, they may have less knowledge about tsunami because it represents

less of a threat to their daily lives. Evidence to support this ‘assumption’ is presented

below. Of particular note is the very high proportion of participants (67%) with bachelor

degrees. This is significantly above the average of 10.1% for the New South Wales pop-

ulation (ABS 2001).

The percentage of participants (83%) that stated they had heard of tsunami prior to the

2004 IOT is rather high although a significant percentage of them hold university quali-

fications reflecting a group of highly educated people who may have studied or read about

natural hazard processes. Anderson-Berry (2003) noted that a ‘well educated’ sample

group might be more skilled at searching for and acquiring information. However, many

participants incorrectly defined a tsunami by using the generic media term ‘‘tidal wave’’.

This variable understanding of the basic science is further illustrated by the mixed

knowledge of tsunamigenic mechanisms. The high recognition of earthquakes as a tsun-

amigenic mechanism (Table 6) is not thought to be significant as the tsunami was widely

quoted as being the result of the world’s second most powerful earthquake. However,

participants are generally unaware that other mechanisms such as subaerial volcanic

eruptions and subaerial sediment slides are also tsunamigenic (Table 6). It is interesting to

note that whilst 87 and 67% of permanent residents recognise that subaqueous volcanic

eruptions and subaqueous sediment slides respectively, are tsunamigenic mechanisms, the

former is unlikely to generate tsunami threatening to the Sydney region. There does exist a

potential however, for subaqueous sediment slides off the continental shelf of New South

Wales to occur and this risk has not been fully quantified (Cummins, pers. comm. 2006).

Therefore, the fact that participants recognise this potential tsunami risk is noteworthy and

may indicate a capacity to act appropriately during a possibly disastrous event. However,

Anderson-Berry (2003) and King et al. (2006) argue that even though residents may

demonstrate general hazard knowledge this does not necessarily prove an adequate

understanding of the hazard that will ultimately transfer into hazard preparedness.

More than 80% of our participants believe Sydney is at risk from future tsunami

inundation. When provided with a map that included tsunamigenic zones of the Pacific,

87% of permanent residents incorrectly identified New Zealand–Tonga as the most likely

region to generate a tsunami damaging to Sydney rather than South America. This may

reflect a belief that ‘proximity to source’ controls tsunami magnitude and intensity rather

than offshore bathymetry, coastal configuration, onshore topography and surface rough-

ness. This is an important issue (for the emergency services) to overcome since the public

may be less likely to respond to an evacuation notice given for a tsunami generated off the

South American coast than they might a tsunami generated in the New Zealand–Tonga

region.

The last significant tsunami (wave height C1 m) in the Sydney region occurred in the

1960’s. About 20% of participants stated that they knew this. However, only 17% of the

20% were correct. Interestingly, those participants who were accurate are all 51 years of

age and older—old enough to remember that event. Age and its relationship to experience

and perception have been noted in other studies of risk perception (see for example,

Dominey-Howes and Minos-Minopoulos 2004; Gregg et al. 2004).

About 47% of participants stated that they believe that the most significant effects of a

future tsunami in Sydney will be ‘‘death and injury of people’’. They qualified their views

with the importance of human life and by making reference to the high exposure and

vulnerability of the population located within likely inundation zones. One participant

noted their concern that the ‘government’ will not be able to respond effectively in a future

114 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

tsunami disaster. Whilst we expected that references to death and injury would be com-

mon, we were more surprised to hear participants refer to damage to critical infrastructure

and lifelines. They explained their concern about damage to critical infrastructure due to its

value in the recovery process following a natural disaster whilst their fear of damage to

lifelines was attributable to the long-term effects on society. Such observations were also

noted by King and Gurtner (2005).

The concern of our participants with death and injury may relate to the fact that so many

are uncertain about the existence of a warning system. We are somewhat surprised to learn

that 17% of participants do not believe that Sydney needs a tsunami warning system but

97% believe Bondi (an iconic Sydney ocean-side municipal area) could be affected by the

next event and 43% think that tsunami will have a maximum flood height (run-up) of more

than 10 m asl.

When participants were asked to consider how important they think tsunami are as a

hazard to Sydney compared with other hazard types, they provided a mixed response. This

is probably not a surprise given that the Sydney region is affected by more common

hazards such as bushfire, drought and hail.

7 Conclusion

The coasts of Australia are at risk from tsunami inundation. Significant efforts are under

way to develop and deploy an operational Australian Tsunami Warning System. Whilst

such a warning system is a vital component of keeping Australia safe from tsunami, it does

not automatically guarantee lives will be saved. Just as important as the warning system is

an educated public that understands and is aware of the hazard and risk and trusts official

warning notices and follows evacuation orders. This was clearly illustrated by the sig-

nificant confusion and misunderstanding following the issue of tsunami warning alert

messages on 2nd April 2007 along the east coast of Australia.

This article has reported on the development and trial of a questionnaire survey

instrument to investigate public perceptions of tsunami in the Sydney region, Australia.

Our experience suggests that such a survey instrument is a potentially valuable tool for

gathering information about what the public understands and that the data generated by a

suitable large survey would be useful for emergency managers in designing public edu-

cation campaigns. However, we note that there are certain aspects of questionnaire design,

layout and question selection that need to be carefully considered to ensure maximum

value of this approach. We recommend that a more in-depth survey, with a much larger and

broader sample size, should be conducted in order to provide more reliable data for

emergency managers. Not withstanding the obvious limitations of this study, our results

may have important implications for those authorities tasked with the responsibility of

developing tsunami hazard education programmes and tsunami risk mitigation strategies in

Australia.

Acknowledgements Many thanks to Geoff Withycombe, Executive Officer of the Sydney CoastalCouncils Group Inc for introductions to Council Officers. All participants are thanked for their willingnessto be involved in this study. Keping Chen from Risk Frontiers is thanked for providing the data used toconstruct Fig. 2. Kevin McCracken from the Department of Human Geography, Macquarie University isthanked for guidance on using the ABS data. We would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and thejournal Editor for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 115

123

Appendix

Survey Questionnaire:

‘Public perception of tsunami risk in the Sydney region’

1. Age:

<18

19-30

31-50

50+

2. Where do you live? _________________________________________

3. How far from the coast do you live?

0-2 km

2-5 km

5-10 km

10+ km

4. How long have you lived at this address? ________________________

5. How long have you lived in Sydney? ____________________________

6. In which country have you lived the longest? __________________

7. What language do you usually speak at home? ___________________

8. What is the highest level of education you have completed?

Some schooling

High school – Year 10

High school – Year 12

TAFE or Trade Certificate/Diploma

Advanced Diploma

University Degree

Postgraduate Qualification

Other, please specify:________________________________

9. What is your occupation? ____________________________________

10. Had you heard of tsunami prior to the Indian Ocean tsunami on December 26 2004?

116 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

11. How would you define a tsunami?

12. Which of the following do you think can generate a tsunami? (You may choose as many as you like)

EarthquakeVolcanic eruption (above the sea)Volcanic eruption (below the sea)Landslide (above the sea)Landslide (below the sea)Meteorite or asteroid strike into the seaOther, please specify________________________________

13. Do you think the Sydney region could be affected by a tsunami?Yes No Don’t know

14. From what local and distant geographic areas could a tsunami come from that affects the Sydney region?

15. Do you think the Sydney region could be affected by a tsunami generated from the following areas? (You may choose as many as you like)

South AmericaCentral AmericaAlaskaHawaiiKuril-KamchatkaJapanPhilippinesIndonesiaNew Guinea-Solomon IslandsNew Zealand-Tonga

16. From the regions selected in question 15 rank them in order from the most likely (1) to the least likely to affect the Sydney region?

South AmericaCentral AmericaAlaskaHawaiiKuril-Kamchatka

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 117

123

Japan

Philippines

Indonesia

New Guinea-Solomon Islands

New Zealand-Tonga

17. Do you know when the last tsunami affected the Sydney region?

Yes No Don’t know

If yes, when? _____________________________________________

18. Do you think a tsunami affecting the Sydney region could have any of the following effects? (You may choose as many as you like)Human Impacts:

Death and injury of people

Damage and destruction to homes and businesses

Damage and destruction to critical infrastructure e.g. ports, harbours, cities

Damage and destruction to critical lifelines e.g. water, gas, electricity

Damage and destruction to communication networks and infrastructure

Damage and destruction to transport networks and infrastructure

Impacts on agriculture

Impacts on coastal tourism

Other, please specify:________________________________

Biophysical Impacts:

Impacts on beaches

Impacts on sand dunes

Impacts on estuaries and lagoons

Impacts on submarine plants and animals

Impacts on coastal plants and animals

Other, please specify:________________________________

19. Which of the above do you think will have the greatest impact on the Sydney region and why?

118 Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122

123

20. Do you know whether a tsunami warning system exists for the Sydney region?

Yes No Don’t know

21. If you answered yes, did you know prior to the Indian Ocean tsunami of December 2004?

Yes No

22. If you answered yes to question 20 are you aware of the emergency procedures you need to follow?

Yes No

23. If you answered no or don’t know to question 20 do you think Sydney needs a tsunami warning system?

Yes No

24. If a tsunami was to strike the Sydney region what do you think the maximum flood height could be?

0 – 1 m

1 – 2 m

2 – 5 m

5 – 10 m

10+ m

Don’t know

A tsunami would not strike Sydney

25. If a tsunami was to strike the Sydney region which suburbs (out of the list below) do you think will be affected?

Manly

Bondi

Sydney City

Drumoyne

Hunters Hill

Parramatta

Pennant Hills

Windsor

Warragamba

Blue Mountains

Don’t know

A tsunami would not strike Sydney

26. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to bushfires?

Not important

Nat Hazards (2008) 45:99–122 119

123

Important

27. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to drought?

Not important

Important

28. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to hail storms?

Not important

Important

29. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to severe winds?

Not important

Important

30. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to lightning strikes?

Not important

Important

31. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to river floods?

Not important

Important

32. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to coastal storm floods?

Not important

Important

33. How would you rate the importance of tsunami risk as a hazard in Sydney compared to earthquakes?

Not important

Important

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