Determining methodology and technology preferences in disaster education: a comparative analysis based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP)

This study applies the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to prioritize teaching methods and educational technologies for disaster education within the context of geography instruction. By combining the judgements of three stakeholder groups, namely academics, geography teachers and pre-service teachers, the study identifies the points of consensus and divergence among them. The evaluation framework is built upon four main criteria: educational effectiveness, student motivation, application constraints and teacher workload. The findings point to a strong consensus that fieldwork is the most effective method for developing disaster awareness, followed by Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and mixed-reality (AR/VR) technologies. Traditional lecturing ranks as the least effective approach. The research reveals a marked theory–practice gap: while academics prioritize student motivation, in-service teachers and pre-service teachers attach greater weight to application constraints such as infrastructure, cost and time. Moreover, in the classroom, curriculum alignment often takes precedence over long-term knowledge retention. The results indicate that strengthening disaster literacy requires policy arrangements that facilitate fieldwork and systematic GIS training for educators.