Earthquake Hazard Knowledge, Preparedness, and Risk Reduction in the Bangladeshi Readymade Garment Industry

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

An interesting study, and I have learnt a lot in reviewing this article. I wonder if concerns are under-reported from participants feeling societal and employment pressures (gender, class, ethnicity) which you do note but of course it is difficult to know how representative the results are if important groups are self-censoring (particularly women who you note dominate the RMG sector).  

You do not discuss corruption other than implicitly. Corrupt authorities and business people must surely be a factor in the lack of resourcing for hazard preparedness (and the Rana Plaza disaster showed the close links between business and politics). Some consider corruption the biggest cause of death in seismically active areas. Your paper would be improved by noting this context. 

Line 463 contains a possible misinterpretation by assuming results indicate how to “increase disaster resilience of Bangladeshi factory occupants” by saving lives etc. It seems to me the results would mainly aid owners of factories improve or maintain the resilience of their businesses. The owners could be RMG operators but could also be absentee landlords.

Author Response

Please find revision note 1

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

An excellent and well conducted project. The authors are to be complemented on not only their sound methodology, but also their resilience to effectively engage stakeholders in the sector. 

However, there is a gap in the data necessary to validate the findings. As the authors state this sector is a major contributor to the economy and employment in the country. The research is also conducted against the background of recent building collapses, neither due to fire or earthquake. To that end, it is necessary to create context for the survey. The report needs to add data that quantifies the industry, and then how representative of the industry were the 20 sites that were expected?

A section or paragraph should be added that identifies the number of factories in the sector, the average number of workers in each factory, the average age of the buildings housing factories. The same data is then needed for the factories in the survey. If there are significant differences, it then needs to be explained in the discussion and findings.

Author Response

Please find revision note 2

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Introduction: Very unstructured and confusing. Too many subsections without much association between them and their relevance to the research problem. The research problem is very ill stated.

Authors must provide a clear picture of what are the real-life challenges of earthquake preparedness in Dhaka and what research problem authors have addressed and why? Then it should be linked with the border literature, and local facts and findings.

Fire is a cascading impact (compound risk) of the earthquakes. It would be misleading to attribute it as an earthquake risk. Non-structural countermeasures for earthquake disaster includes are quite compressive and well-established.  

What is the difference between “earthquake hazard knowledge” and “Risk Perception”? Then again “preparedness” has been used to delineate another set of activities related to risk awareness. To me, it is very confusing. It seems the authors are less aware of the discourse.

Line 138 : “In contrast, Mulilis and Duval (1995) and Mulilis et al., (1990) revealed that even when 138 individuals have a better understanding of hazards and perceived risk, they may not undertake 139 preparedness activities” . This is a misleading and incorrect citation and interpretation.

Line 146 “ Despite this, hazard knowledge and risk perception remain 146 important components of risk mitigation approaches (Gaillard and Dibben, 2008).” I did not understand what is the argument and connotation of the statement with reference?

Line 152 to 166: difficulty to comprehend the reasons that authors presumed such information would be placed here. I do not clearly correlate the logic.

There is no requirement to take individual variables to predict or understand communities’ earthquake preparedness attitude. Earthquake preparedness discourses are very robust now. The authors need to establish which approach to adopt or discard to understand the risk awareness including preparedness attitude and why that is so?  I do not see any thoughtful, systematic, academic debate, and narratives in this study investigating the risk awareness decision making and attitude development process. I was struggling to find a clear aim and objective of the study.

Methodology: Also very obscured and poor flow of paragraphs. I could not figure out what methods have been used and for what reasons in the data collection and data analysis process?

Discussion: How those findings are similar to, or different from, the key take away from this research - i.e., does the study support these other findings in other places and contexts, how do they differ, and what is the value-added from this study. the conclusion/discussion section should be better linked to broader literature (there are very few citations and attempts to link to broader literature), and the authors need to clearly articulate what is the new knowledge that is added about how to plan out preparedness strategies and motivates community preparedness in Dhaka. This is currently not clear from the results or interpretation.  Also, the conclusions section is redundant in places.

The first half currently repeats what is in the introduction and abstract. A discussion and conclusion does not summaries findings either. The findings and implications listed need to be discussed in relation to literature.

Due to the huge language issue, it was very difficult to go through the paper.

There is no substantial finding or delineated approach based on that I would recommend this paper for publication.

Author Response

Please find revision note 3

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The author has responded to the issues raisded in my orginial review. It is a well written and interesting research report. 

Author Response

Please find attached file that addresses to reviewers' comments

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf