T

he lack of research on natural disasters in the country has prevented the government from being able to effectively conduct mitigation efforts, experts have said.

Irwan Meilano, a researcher with the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) said that there were not too many researchers who wanted to study the social impacts of disasters in vulnerable regions of the country.

Irwan added that the government should assign more research on natural disasters and make it a national policy with the Research and Technology and Higher Education Ministry as the main coordinator.

'€œResearch is costly and the returns take a long time to show, but it is necessary. Mitigation efforts, including research, will cost less than what the country spends after disasters occur,'€ Irwan told The Jakarta Post.

Lack of preparedness can have dire consequences for countries prone to disaster.

Irwan, who is also a professor with the Research Center for Disaster Mitigation (RCDM) of ITB, said that the 2006 tsunami in the Maldives plunged the country into an economic crisis.

Separately, the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) said the lack of funding had prevented the government from carrying out programs to prepare people for disasters.

According to BNPB spokesman Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, the agency'€™s budget for preventive and mitigation efforts for 2015 was only Rp 700 billion (US$52 million), most of which was spent on training of residents and rescue workers instead of paying for research.

'€œResearch is not the primary duty of the BNPB. The government has allocated a special research budget to the Research and Technology and Higher Education Ministry and a number of universities also conduct studies on disasters,'€ Sutopo told the Post.

Research and Technology and Higher Education Minister Muhammad Nasir acknowledged the lack of research on natural disasters.

'€œIt is universities and non-ministerial bodies that conduct the studies, but these institutions are not well coordinated and it is hard for the user [such as BNPB] to make use of the data,'€ Nasir told the Post.

Nasir also said that each institution had its own expertise in earthquakes, landslides, drought, volcanic eruptions and forest fires.

The ministry aims for better coordination among all institutions under it next year to be able to work more effectively.

The institutions include the Agency for the Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI) and state universities, including ITB, Gadjah Mada University, Diponegoro University, Udayana University and Hasanuddin University. (rbk)