Abstract

Flooding is a recurrent climate-related hazard in southern Thailand that frequently disrupts schooling and undermines educational continuity. Despite the critical importance of school-based disaster preparedness, there is limited empirical evidence explaining the drivers of flood preparedness among primary school teachers in climate-vulnerable regions. This study aimed to identify the cognitive, experiential, and topographic factors correlated with flood knowledge, flood risk perception (FRP), and flood preparedness (FP) among primary school teachers in Nakhon Si Thammarat province. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 745 teachers using a structured questionnaire that covered sociodemographic characteristics, flood experience, training, information sources, and regional topography (elevation, slope, and distance to river). Spearman’s rank correlation and Generalized Linear Models (GLMs) were applied to examine the relationships and predictive factors. The findings revealed that topographic factors, specifically distance to the nearest river, were significantly associated with teachers’ flood knowledge, while school elevation was significantly related to FRP. Community-based information was a strong predictor of flood knowledge. Furthermore, prior flood experience, first-aid training, access to school-based information networks, and FRP were identified as key drivers of FP. Moreover, the negative relationships were found between flood knowledge and FP suggest that preparedness is influenced by complex cognitive and behavioral mechanisms rather than knowledge alone. These findings highlight the importance of integrating topographic risk information, experiential learning, and community-based information networks into school-based disaster preparedness programs rather than relying solely on knowledge. These findings offer practical implications for designing targeted teacher training and school-based disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies in climate-vulnerable settings.