Abstract
This chapter seeks to assess the future risks to Indonesian mega-cities by examining the record of tectonically generated disasters in the past. It argues that there are two clear trends, to some extent balancing each other. On the one hand, the quantifiable impact of natural disasters is growing as populations increase and concentrates ever more in endangered coastal mega-cities. On the other, global advances in communications, and scientific understanding of the dangers of eruptions, tsunamis and earthquakes, provide unprecedented opportunities for preparedness. A third factor appears to be cyclical. Indonesian cities were (badly) planned and built, and attracted half the Indonesian population to endangered coastal locations, during a century which was unusually mild in terms of both volcanic eruptions and tsunamis. Since 2004 it has become clear that mega-tsunamis must recur every few centuries to release the build-up of pressure in Indonesian subduction zones. The periodicity of mega-eruptions is harder to predict, but even a repetition of the 19th century pattern would bring not only unprecedented death and destruction in the 21st, but incalculable disruption to agriculture and air transport.
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Notes
- 1.
Swiss Re calculates in terms of the number of people exposed to risks rather than the degree of risk—which is of course far harder to quantify.
- 2.
The best cumulative data set online is that of NOAA, National Geophysical Data Centre.
- 3.
- 4.
NOAA, National Geophysical Data Centre, Tsunami events search, 2013.
- 5.
NOAA, National Geophysical Data Centre, Tsunami events search, 2013.
- 6.
Jan van Groenewegen to Batavia, 28 January 1660, VOC 1233 (KA 1123), f. 502r (my translation). I gratefully acknowledge the labours of Takeshi Ito in transcribing and editing this material, now newly published by Brill (Ito 2015).
- 7.
Correspondence with Kerry Sieh and Belle Philibosian, November–December 2012. They pointed out, however, that other evidence does not so far suggest that an event in Siberut would have such major effects as far away as Banda Aceh. Clearly, this is important new evidence in that direction, however.
- 8.
A fuller modern analysis of the quake can be found in Bankoff (2007, pp. 411–427).
- 9.
The quotation is from the official Dutch report to the VOC in Coolhaas, Generale Missiven VI, pp. 49–50, pp. 830 & 831–832. This disaster was noted also by Chinese traders between Batavia and Nagasaki, who reported to the Nagasaki authorities that “a heavy earthquake hit the castle of Kelapa [Batavia], causing some casualties. An earthquake of this magnitude seldom takes place anywhere. The country was greatly disturbed” (Ishii 1998, p. 237).
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Reid, A. (2016). Building Cities in a Subduction Zone: Some Indonesian Dangers. In: Miller, M., Douglass, M. (eds) Disaster Governance in Urbanising Asia. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-649-2_3
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