Is the Indonesian disaster response budget correlated with disaster risk?

This study investigates the correlation between disaster budget, index of disaster risks and the population of 23 districts in the Aceh province, northern Indonesia. It also explores how the budget for disasters is proposed and prepared by Indonesian local governments. A descriptive quantitative approach is used to examine this relationship. Data were collected from the budgets of local governments (Badan Penanggulangan Bencana Daerah [BPBD] or local disaster management agency) and the disaster risk index. In addition, surveys were undertaken in which the respondents were the key officers in the BPBDs who are responsible for the budget and programmes to obtain detailed information about how the local government prepares their budget for disaster. By employing the Pearson’s chi-square test and the Pearson correlation test, this study revealed no significant statistical relationship between the disaster budget and the level of disaster risks among districts or cities in the Aceh province, northern Indonesia. However, results show that the total budget of the local governments has a significant positive correlation with the disaster budget. The surveys also confirm the correlation between the total budget of the local government and disasters as the same budgeting procedure is applied. The result generalisability might be limited as this study only focused on one of Indonesia’s provinces, Aceh. KEYWORDS: disaster risk; disaster relief planning; disaster budget; local government; tsunami; Indonesia.