Analysis of the Operational Preparedness of Urban Households in the Earthquake Case Study: Kerman City

Nowadays, natural disasters are among the most crucial issues in many cities all around the world. Iran, due
to its geographical location, historically has always been encountering natural disasters, especially earthquakes.
This fact reveals the necessity of using disaster management procedures to reduce the damages caused
by earthquakes. In this regard, investigating the role and status of operational preparedness as the most important
phase of the disaster management cycle across four regions in Kerman is the goal of this study. This research is
of the descriptive-analytic method and of survey type. The required data have been collected at the household
level by the use of library and field studies through questionnaire distribution. The statistical population is comprised
of precisely 141867 resident households of Kerman and therefore the sample size has been estimated to be
350 households according to Cochran formula. The sampling method is cluster sampling proportional to sample
size. Finally, after data collection, the data have been analyzed using SPSS and one-way ANOVA, Tukey tests
and Pearson correlation. The results of this research show that preparedness is the most important phase before
disasters occurrence that in this regard there are differences among four regions in Kerman, so that region 2 with
an average of 52.52 has the highest and region 4 with an average of 46.64 has the least operational preparedness.
Also, the socio-economic status of households with a significant level of 0.002 and the weighting factor of 0.167**
is correlated with their operational preparedness level, showing that as households′ socio-economic condition
improves, so will their operational preparedness level in facing earthquakes