Population Preparedness for Disasters and Extreme Weather Events as a Predictor of Building a Resilient Society: The Slovak Republic

The current increase and severity of the natural disasters whose effects on the public health are likely to be even more extreme and complex, requires enhancing and developing the disaster preparedness on the population level. In order to be able to do so, it is inevitable and determinative to know the factors that affect people's preparedness on the population level. Therefore, the objective of this article is to present the results from assessing the factors related to the population preparedness for the disasters on a sample of citizens living from the Slovak Republic. Our research is based on the exploration of the questionnaire survey' results aimed at investigating the preparedness and preventive proactive behaviour of the population against the disasters. The search for the initiators of such a behaviour and assessment of the influence of various aspects (e.g., the respondents' experience with disasters, their vulnerability to disasters, the risk awareness, the perception of the disaster risks in the changing environment, etc.) on the respondents' behaviour against disasters is the main part of the article and is supported by the statistical analysis. The results of the survey suggest that the disaster risk awareness and overall disaster preparedness level is rather poor and the population is inactive. The proactive behaviour of the respondents against the disasters is partially affected by some of their personality and socio-economic characteristics, especially the younger respondents currently incline more to adopting the protective measures. In addition, other aspects, e.g., the negative experience with the disasters in the past influence the preparedness. However, the impacts must have been relatively serious for the proactive behaviour to be influenced. The influences of other aspects as well as the possible methods for improving the disaster preparedness and the possibilities of increasing the resilience of the population as a whole are also discussed in this article.