Talent-Based Disaster Management: A Case Study of Flood Disaster Handling in The Provinces of Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra

Abstract

Background: Recurrent floods in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra expose persistent weaknesses in matching disaster personnel competencies with operational needs and in coordinating personnel across institutions. Objective: This study aims to formulate a proposed talent-based disaster management framework that explains the roles of talent management and collaborative governance across mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery in Aceh, North Sumatra, and West Sumatra. Methods: This exploratory qualitative multiple-case study examined documentary evidence and interviews with four informants (N1–N4) drawn from disaster-governance, operational, and academic stakeholder groups. Data were organized by disaster phase, coded deductively using talent-management and collaborative-governance concepts, compared across the three provincial cases, and synthesized through pattern matching. Results: The findings identify recurring competency mismatches, fragmented personnel information, uneven access to certification, and weak retention arrangements. Cross-case synthesis links mitigation to talent identification, preparedness to development, response to competency-based deployment, and recovery to retention, with collaborative governance providing the coordination mechanism among government, emergency organizations, security institutions, communities, and other stakeholders. Conclusion: The resulting proposed conceptual framework redirects attention from personnel volume alone to competency fit, shared personnel information, cross-agency standards, and sustained specialist participation. Because the framework is based on four informants and documentary evidence, it should be validated with larger comparative samples and different disaster types before claims of effectiveness are made.