Lies  near the Eurasia and Indo-Australia’s border plate, Indonesia is categorized as natural disaster prone areas. It is common for Indonesian to experience earthquakes that occurs due to volcanic activities or ground movement.  Beside that fact, Indonesia is also an archipelago.

Thus, the probability of this country to hit by disaster is relatively higher compared other countries.  West Java Province is one of eleven provinces which is categorized as natural disaster-prone areas in Indonesia. Other provinces with similar category are West Sumatera, Bengkulu, DKI Jakarta, D.I Yogyakarta, Bali and Nusa Tenggara. The distribution map of disaster-prone areas is uneven. Regardless its effects, there were almost 1400 occurences of natural disaster in Central Java and no less than 800 natural disaster happened in  West Java during the period of 1997-2009. The most common disaster is earthquake and volcanic eruptions since many active volcanos in Java. Meanwhile, Provinces in the northern part of Sumatera are also vulnerable of natural disasters as well as Nusa Tenggara and Southern parts of Sulawesi.

Discussant: Harlan Isjwara