The Resilient Community: Strengthening People-Centered Disaster Risk Reduction in the Merapi Volcano Community, Java, Indonesia

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for the interesting study. I am some comments which need to be addressed: 

1. The authors should clarify the sampling technique (how they validated the sample size, and why purposive sampling technique?)
2. Was there any validation for the questionnaire?
3. What do you mean by missing system? Do you need to use it in your analysis? If yes, then why? if not, then please remove it from the analysis part.
4. Please mention ethical clearance issue and describe how did you maintain it.
5. Discussion part can have more information following some previous studies.

Author Response

Kindly see the attachment considering the response to the review. 

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Introduction:

This is a good start to the introduction to appropriately set up the purpose and scope of the research. However, some further work is needed to improve:

1. The first paragraph outlines the Merapi context. Some of the information needs some further context so that a reader who is not familiar with the case study can more effectively understand the key points:
   1. Clarify the point about disaster-prone areas. Outline which specific areas have been designated as disaster-prone by the government and how this compares to the evacuation areas. Without context, some of the information in the last three sentences of this paragraph don’t make a lot of sense.
   2. Briefly clarify what types of DRR programs were implemented.
   3. Consider moving this paragraph to section 2 altogether, and just focusing the introduction section on the more theoretical/conceptual aspects of risk, DRR, vulnerability, etc. (many of the points from above are clarified in the study area section, so this paragraph can be integrated (or deleted) as required).
2. There is a good start to outlining aspects related to risk, exposure, coping, etc., but this needs to be a bit further developed. Some improved clarity on points about
3. There is no clear research gap outlined in the article. It’s not clear how this article contributes to the literature, beyond being another empirical piece highlighting the importance of risk perception on DRR initiatives. Some further clarity on how the research makes a contribution is needed.

Study Area:

1. Might want to just highlight that the 1.6 million people are living on the flanks of Mt. Merapi in the first paragraph.
2. Why is the 2010 eruption not included in the list of most significant eruptions?
3. How are community services dependent on nature (in the first paragraph)?  
4. It would be useful to explain the concept of sister villages.
5. The second half of the last paragraph is a bit hard to follow. What is the main point of this last paragraph? There is a lot of information and ideas, and it’s not clear how or why these are all relevant to the research outlined in the article. Some further explanation/clarity would be helpful.

Survey and sampling design:

1. The authors state (capital emphasis added): “This survey is conducted among people who either (1) live within 20 km of Merapi, OR (2) have experienced the Merapi eruption of 2010, OR (3) have been either temporarily or permanently displaced by the 2010 eruption”. It then goes to state that the Merapi community was defined as those living within 20km of the crater of the volcano. To clarify, perhaps this should read as:
   1. This survey is conducted among people who either (1) live within 20 km of Merapi, AND (2) have experienced the Merapi eruption of 2010, OR (3) have been either temporarily or permanently displaced by the 2010 eruption
   2. Otherwise – it is not exactly clear whether people have to be within 20km of the crater or not. And if they don’t need to be within 20km, then what is the study area for the purposive sampling?
2. Was any method used to ensure people did not respond more than once to the survey?
3. In section 3.3.2, the text uses the term ‘pre-event DRR conditions’. What does this mean? Is this implying that responses were taken before the most recent 2020 eruption? Or what is the pre-event? Is there a post-event? How does this relate to those who might have experienced both the 2010 eruption and the more recent 2020 eruption? If Merapi erupts so frequently, is there really a pre-event condition?
   1. Similarly, what is ‘recent times’ in terms of accessing a DRR program?
   2. Some of these questions seem to have a lot of missing data…
4. Some of the questions seem like they should be connected. For example, only 38 respondents indicated that they had experienced with DRR programs. Yet the response for whether the DRR program incorporated the importance of women group on the decision making and DRR has a much higher number of responses. If people didn’t indicate ‘yes’ to the DRR program question, how can they respond to the questions related to the programming included as part of the DRR program?
5. In the explanation of the survey, it seems like participants were asked whether they could give examples – how did they do this in the context of the survey? Were there no examples provided? Why are there no results related to this question included in the results/discussion?
   1. Similarly, the text description indicates that participants were asked “what were their thoughts on collaborating with external stakeholders for disaster-related issues to provide advantages for preparedness”? If this was answered in a yes/no/maybe format – this isn’t really participants giving their thoughts – this could be rephrased to enhance clarity.

Results:

1. On page 10, the authors state: “However, since the perceived risk of the Merapi community is said to be influenced by three factors of risk knowledge and information, socio-economic, and cultural setting as explained in Lavigne et al. [64] and Saragih et al. [8], people sometimes ignore the recommendations from the government.” This should be further explained. This really just includes one sentence in the introduction section, and then this is presented as more of a conclusion in the results section. Further discussion/information is needed before making this type of conclusion.
2. At the end of section 4.1, there is a good discussion on the importance of education. It might be worth comparing the level of education of the respondents to the overall education levels of the people that live in the areas surrounding Merapi (e.g., are those who completed the online survey using survey monkey more likely to be of higher education that the general population)? Although the survey results are not presented as being generalizable to the population, it would be helpful to have this information as context for interpreting the results.
3. Section 4.2: the results here don’t seem to match the data on the number of participants who said they participated in a DRR program. Perhaps some discussion on this is warranted (e.g., there was a lot of missing data, so the responses from the type of DRR programs respondents participated in is likely a more valid response rate).
4. On page 11 the text references a post-DMMT survey? What is this? Did the authors complete two surveys? Or is this from another research project? Some clarity is needed here.
5. Page 14: the question related to prioritizing vulnerable groups is not entirely clear. Is this related to whether the DRR programming prioritized vulnerable groups? Or is this related to the DRR organization within the community? If it’s the DRR organization in the community, and many people aren’t aware of this organization, then how can they respond to this question? Also – can you clarify in what ways the DRR programming or organizing is supposed to prioritize vulnerable groups?

Discussion:

1. Some good discussion of the findings in the first paragraph of this section. One other possibility is that the type of data collected is not accurately capturing the degree or complexity of risk perception (i.e., in responding to yes/no questions), and therefore, it is harder to make a definitive conclusion.

Writing:

Some improvements to the overall writing would help improve clarity and expression of ideas. There are a number of areas throughout the article where the precise meaning and overall point is hard to follow. Some minor typo errors throughout (e.g., missing punctuation etc.).  

Author Response

Kindly see the attachment for the response to the review. 

Thank you

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Overall, the authors have a done a good job to clarify some of the questions and points raised throughout the review process. However, there are quite a few grammatical/phrasing issues that could be improved to enhance clarity. It would be helpful if there is a copyeditor available to help the authors with this process. I've denoted the overall recommendation as 'accept after minor revision' due to these English language issues that could be corrected. 

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we have been working on English copy-writing on the latest manuscript which was submitted along with this response.

Thank you