ENHANCING COASTAL DISASTER MITIGATION MEASURES: VEGETATION BASED FEASIBILITY STUDY FOR SOUTHERN JAVA, INDONESIA

Abstract

Indonesia is a country that is prone to disaster especially earthquake and volcanic eruption because its located in the ring of fire. The type of disasters can produce another type of disaster which is: tsunami.  The nature of tsunamis that were hard to predict and arrive with little warning, Indonesians can minimize the effect of tsunami by creating coastal protection. In this study we look for the location to create the coastal forest as an enhancement of the mitigation effort. We conducted our study in the Pangandaran district as were a severe tsunami in the 2006 that caused more than 400 deaths. We conducted a suitability analysis to identify tsunami prone area based on the following criteria: should be had elevation <10m, slope gradient <2%, within proximity of 500m from coastline, and <100m from river and should be settlement or urban area. The creation of vulnerability map was using map algebra to calculate the weighted parameter from each class. Based our analysis using GIS analysis, the most vulnerable area in the Pangandaran district is the bay area, where we founded 1,419 acres of coastal area for which coastal forests could be planted to enhance protection against tsunamis.