Research trends on hazards, disasters, risk reduction and climate change in Indonesia: a systematic literature review

Abstract. The number of disasters due to natural hazards and climate change are on the rise. Within the last decade the world has experienced the most frequent and impactful disasters. The year 2015 was the hottest year ever and the associated disaster impacts have drastically increased the cost to the society socially and economically. The Asia Pacific region has been the place where these disasters occurs the most. Indonesia, one of the countries in this region, is one of the most at risks from disasters and climate change impacts in this region.

This paper aims to do a systematic literature review on published academic materials related to hazards, risks, disaster risks reduction (DRR) and climate change in Indonesia. Systematic literature review is defined as systematic or evidence-based literature reviews with explicit and transparent methods and follows a standard protocol or a series of stages so that bias can be reduced and more importantly able to provide a comprehensive body of knowledge. While there is a vast material that have been published related to hazards and DRR on Indonesia, there has not yet a literature review that examines these materials in a comprehensive and systematic way. This systematic review is important since it outlines recent research progress over time which can help to determine which topics have been heavily researched and thus seeks to recommend future research needs. The author conducts a multi-staged literature review to study publications that are indexed within SCOPUS. Multi-stage processes are taken to determine inclusion and exclusion for more relevant findings. The author also consults authors' and organizations' profiles from Google Scholar, Research Gate, to determine gender, affiliations, extent of publications.

The first stage of search from Scopus gives a list of 5253 publications by which after second stage gives 1478 publications and third stage gives a final most relevant publication of 744. The findings are outlined in two parts. One on the results of the analysis in terms of times of publications, most active researchers and research organizations, most cited papers, and categorization of major research topics. The other one is on the examinations on the roles of Indonesian authors and organizations in publishing in international journals, involvement in highly cited papers, and how collaborations have taken place amongst Indonesian and international researchers and organizations. This thus led to recommendations for capacity building in research in Indonesia.

The findings on the first part are as follow. The final selected publications are categorized into three major topics of (1) hazard, risks and disaster assessments (HRD), (2) disaster risk reduction (DRR), and (3) climate change vulnerability, impacts and adaptation (CC). Publications on the category of HRD are comprised of more than half of the total publications, while the rest is divided amongst those related to DRR and CC. The oldest publication was issued in 1978 and the earlier period publications were heavily focused on the topics of geophysical hazards and risks related to earthquake, volcanic activity and tsunami. There were a surge of publications following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which impacted Aceh while publications related to DRR and CC increasingly gaining ground in the last 10 years. A more detailed analysis on research topics shows that on the HRD group is mainly related to research on volcanic eruption, tsunami and earthquake. Research on the DRR group focuses on governance, recovery and reconstruction, early warning systems. Those on CC groups, the research are mainly on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, governance of adaptation and climate change impacts on different sectors.

The findings on the role of Indonesian researchers and research organizations show great needs for capacity building in research, publications and collaborations. The study finds that international non-Indonesia authors dominate the number of researchers. Only half of the publications are co-authored by Indonesians. Collaborations have indeed taken place amongst between international and Indonesian organizations but it is only by limited number of Indonesian organizations or researchers. This suggest that Indonesians researchers tend to work with other Indonesians and hence needed to expand their collaborations with international scholars as a strategy to increase the quality of the publications measured by the number of citations and ability to submit for higher impact journals.

The paper recommends further research to be done on research on hazards and risks identifications on other locations in Indonesia, preparedness and on vulnerable groups, and governance and impacts of climate change on different sectors. It also calls for more strengthening capacity of Indonesian authors in writing for international journal publications and creating space for collaborations amongst Indonesian and international researchers.