Bridging Operational Gaps: A Thematic Analysis of Police Disaster Management Practices in Aceh, Indonesia

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-565-2_2How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Police; Disaster Management; Interagency Coordination; Organizational Capacity; Risk Governance

Abstract

While the roles and responsibilities of police in disaster preparedness and emergency response have been legislated, there is a lack of empirical evidence regarding how police personnel interpret and operationalize these roles. This article examines the role of police in disaster management in Aceh Province, a region highly exposed to hydrometeorological and geological hazards. A qualitative exploratory design was adopted, in which seven (7) senior and mid-level police officers with direct responsibility for disaster operations at both provincial and district levels participated in in-depth semi-structured interviews. Braun and Clarke’s method of thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. The findings show that police officers have good contextual knowledge and high motivation for emergency response with effective coordination, yet there are still significant inconsistencies in the distribution of training, very limited specialist equipment, delayed information flows, and low collaboration during preparedness phases. This study suggests that enhancement of police preparedness for disasters requires not only structural improvement but also integration of frontline experiential knowledge into institutional planning and policymaking. These insights contribute to the improvement of multi-agency disaster governance and to the advance of comparative research into policing in disaster contexts.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Bustani Bustani
AU  - Rina Suryani Oktari
AU  - Budi Arianto
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/30
TI  - Bridging Operational Gaps: A Thematic Analysis of Police Disaster Management Practices in Aceh, Indonesia
BT  - Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Social Environment Diversity (ICOSEND 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 5
EP  - 12
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-565-2_2
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-565-2_2
ID  - Bustani2026
ER  -