Measuring Natural Disaster Literacy in Tehran

About This Survey

Iran’s capital, Tehran, is a megacity home to over 15 million people. Like Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Tokyo, Tehran is also located at the convergence of multiple fault lines. Scientists believe that earthquakes strike along these fault lines in cycles of approximately 150 years. The last major earthquake to hit Tehran occurred in 1830. A major earthquake is overdue.

This video details the findings of novel survey research on disaster preparedness by Peter Noack, who conducted the work while a master’s student at Philipps-University Marburg. Noack was a member of the NaDiMa project funded by the German Federal Foreign Office and DAAD and led by Professor Mohammad Reza Farzanegan at CNMS, Philipps-University Marburg. In support of this research, the Bourse & Bazaar Foundation provided funding to enable Noack to conduct a robust representative survey of Tehran residents in order to measure their “natural disaster literacy” and to understand whether socioeconomic factors impact the preparedness of Tehran residents for disaster scenarios.

Gathering insights from 500 randomly sampled respondents in telephone interviews (margin of error +/- 4.4%), Noack found that Tehran residents have low to average levels of natural disaster literacy when compared with other cities worldwide. Too few Iranian residents know what to do in the event of a natural disaster. Just 48 percent of respondents to Noack’s survey reported receiving disaster preparedness training.

The findings of this survey can help policymakers design better mitigation and preparedness programs. This innovative research was also supported by IIE and the IranPoll Opinion Research Support Fund in Memory of Professor Thomas Schelling.