محمد ثانوی

Throughout history, Iran has always been exposed to many natural and unnatural crises due to its geographical, economic, cultural, natural, and political characteristics, and especially its location in the strategic region of the Middle East. This study aims to investigate the position and role of the logistics capacities of the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy (IRI Navy henceforth) in encountering the natural disaster crisis. The entire participants included 120 senior officers of the Deputy of Readiness and Support, the heads of readiness and support of the affiliated regions and bases, and the middle managers of the headquarters and ranks of the Readiness and Support Command of Najaf among whom 92 were selected randomly based on Krejcie and Morgan’s (19700 table. Data were collected quantitatively using researcher-made disaster management questionnaires and IRI Navy preparedness capacities. Then, the validity of the questionnaire was assessed through confirmatory factor analysis and its reliability was assessed by Cronbach’s alpha. To test the hypotheses and the accuracy of the conceptual model of the research, the structural equation modeling method using the partial least squares (PLS) method was used. Findings indicated the significance of the IRI Navy's preparedness hypotheses on managing and reducing the damage caused by the natural disaster crisis. The results showed that the component of responsibility had the highest rank and importance and the components of timeliness, information, and technology, coordination, mobile systems, efficiency, and preparedness were among the next priorities of logistics capacity in case of encountering a natural disaster crisis, respectively.