CARISMAND aims to deal with issues of preparedness, response to disasters and after-crisis recovery which are, inevitably, influenced by the cultural background of individuals and the society they live in. Cultural factors play an important role in determining the way people respond to stress, engage in crisis management and accept disaster relief in an emergency. Disaster management that is aware, respects, and makes use of local cultural aspects will not only be more effective but, will also improve the community’s disaster coping capacities.
CARISMAND is setting out to:
Objective 1: provide a broad multi-disciplinary overview of existing knowledge about the cultural factors that may shape and influence citizens’ risk perceptions, emotions, and risk behaviour in the context of man-made, natural and technical disasters, and establish a sound theoretical basis for improving disaster policies and procedures.
Objective 2: To provide a detailed gap analysis between current legal frameworks, policies, regulations and actual practices across different European countries regarding the inclusion of cultural aspects in the disaster management cycle, and identify best-practice examples and the structural potential to implement them in other locations.
Objective 3: To identify how disaster risk communication itself is embedded in culture – including the role of the media in risk communication – and which cultural factors within disaster management organisations influence the effectiveness of professional management and response.
Objective 4: To explore the possibilities and current practices of how cultural aspects can strengthen the ability of citizens and communities to prepare for disaster situations, respond efficiently and accelerate recovery processes, proposing recommendations for disaster managers on how cultural values can be used for citizen empowerment.
Objective 5: To analyse citizens’ uptake – or rejection – of different technologies in disaster preparation, response, and recovery, exploring how different technology acceptance cultures can contribute to both successful disaster management and the enhancement of citizens’ coping strategies.
Objective 6: To develop over the project’s life-time an active feedback-loop between disaster management stakeholders and citizens that can be institutionalised. This will establish, test and refine solutions for culturally-informed best practices in disaster management and benefit from a wide cross-sectional knowledge transfer.
Objective 7: To develop a “formal” toolkit for disaster management stakeholders, as well as a knowledge base that is “mapping” culture in the context of disaster and can be used by disaster managers in their everyday practice as well as by interested citizens for awareness, information and empowerment purposes.
The innovative approach of CARISMAND places at its very core the continuous information exchange with and between disaster management stakeholders and citizens, through three Stakeholder Assemblies and six large-scale Citizen Summits in different European locations.