Evaluation of Disaster Awareness and Sensitivity Level of Higher Education Students

AbstractTurkey is located in a region that frequently experience various disasters due to geological, morphological and climate characteristics. Earthquake, flooding and landslides are the premise fields along these disasters. Furthermore, devastating earthquakes, floods that are seen as a result of global climate change has led to significant loss of both life and property in the region. On the other hand, human-induced disasters, as well as natural disasters, have become increasingly risky and harmful to society in Turkey. Especially in recent years mining accidents in Kozlu, Soma and Ermenek resulted in the loss of large number of workers lives. All these cases reveals the urge to be prepared against disasters in Turkey. The first condition for being prepared against disasters, is by educating the society (individuals). Therefore, with the support of the public and civil society organizations, fulfilling this need for education is possible by making a series of training programs for teachers / students and thus their families in order to make them informed against disasters. Although general definition of disaster and occurrence etc topics takes its place in the educational curriculum, the topics on mitigation measures of damage before disasters and behavior during disaster and post-disaster are undermined. In addition to this, we cannot claim that equal training is received by all segments of the society. In this study, main aim is to determine the level of disaster awareness of students in higher education institutions. In this regard, questionnaire data collection method is applied to the students of Gazi University Faculty of Architecture, City and Regional Planning. Descriptive statistics are used in the analysis and evaluation of the data. By revealing the level of awareness in the higher education level, the study also aims to point to the need for disaster mitigation education that includes various topics and is accessible to whole society