Disaster Preparedness (DP) needs to be best viewed from a broad perspective in order to have a sound understanding of its practices, its scope and its impact on the successful implementation of disaster management. However, the DP concept has become more complex as time has progressed because there is no consensus within the literature as to its definition. Therefore, with the aim of deriving a working definition for DP, which includes all the aspects of the concept, a systematic review was carried out. The systematic review covered publications from 2015 to 2020 in order to discover the different types of definitions for DP within the literature. The 34 identified definitions from the selected articles have been analysed focusing on five definitional attributes called: concept of DP, aim of DP, stakeholders related to DP, time frame with reference to the disaster, and key practices of DP. The final definition revealed that DP has a close relationship with disaster mitigation, response and recovery, which provides the base for the successful implementation of these phases. Therefore, the study suggests that the DP concept needs to be addressed thoroughly, in order to have successful outcomes in overall disaster management

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Ms. Senuri Siriwardhana