Abstract

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami was responsible for more than 200,000 deaths. Indonesia suffered the worst of the disaster with more than 169,000 dead and more than a million people displaced. A Tsunami Early Warning System has been designed and built, with a warning center located in Aceh. However, little is known about how to carry the warning to the local population. No one knows if this warning system will work, mainly because no one knows how the people will react to a warning of this magnitude. The purpose of this paper is to review both the human factors literature on warning systems and the social psychology literature on social structures and attitudes/beliefs. By combining the two fields, we hope to provide a more thorough knowledge base with which to begin the task of finding a solution to preventing another disaster. We also discuss potential future research in Indonesia.