Improved understanding of risk exposure and its public awareness in areas exposed to multi-hazards
The awareness of multiple hazards and the understanding and the assessment of risks and their consequences is a critical and fundamental step towards the development of local, national and international policies and strategies within all phases of the disaster risk management cycle, in particular preparedness. The availability of reliable scientific data and information (including historical occurrences and climate projections) to anticipate future disaster events or crisis situations, considering uncertainties inherent to natural systems characterization, and effectively support decision-making processes at all levels represents a global challenge for both the research community and governance institutions.
Actions at national/local and global/regional levels rely on knowledge of risks in all its dimension and changeable nature. A strengthened understanding of risks by the population (and decision-makers) is needed, based on both records of past events and forecasts and projections (with quantified uncertainties) that reflect consideration of evolving trends and dynamics over time and space. This is particularly acute in the case of multi-hazard risks, i.e. occurrences of several disasters either in cascade or at once. Moreover, the work needs to be complemented with improved knowledge on how risk awareness and actions are influenced and shaped by diverse aspects such as past events, cultures and traditions.
The understanding of multiple disaster risks (and related awareness) relies on knowledge gained about historical data and information about past events and related lessons learned as well as the ability to forecast and assess future risks under uncertainty (including impacts of pandemics, as well as global change, including climate trends and earth system and environment dynamics). These complex interactions between human decisions and multiple hazards require novel risk assessment approaches such as agent-based modelling and systems dynamics methods. This will result in improved preparedness actions built upon these analyses (e.g. defining evacuation routes, responsiveness of health services, etc.). Social media also plays a role in disaster analytics. For example, an increasing number of location-based social network services can provide time-stamped, geo-located data that opens new opportunities and solutions to a wide range of challenges by analysing the extracted public behaviour responses from social media before, during and after disaster events. When using social media data, the design for data collection and analysis has to respect fundamental rights, privacy and data protection and analyses have to take related societal effects in online and offline environments into account as well as possible disinformation and fake news. Also, risk awareness, understanding and preparedness are unequally distributed along a wide range of variables (socio-economic, cultural, regional etc.) that may generate drawbacks and conflicting issues with respect to groups' vulnerability.
This topic requires the effective contribution of SSH disciplines and the involvement of SSH experts, institutions as well as the inclusion of relevant SSH expertise, in order to produce meaningful and significant effects enhancing the societal impact of the related research activities. The involvement of citizens, civil society and other societal stakeholders in co-design and co-creation should be promoted. In order to achieve the expected outcomes, international cooperation is encouraged.
Where possible and relevant, synergy-building and clustering initiatives with successful proposals in the same area should be considered, including the organisation of international conferences in close coordination with the Community for European Research and Innovation for Security (CERIS) activities and/or other international events.