Building European Communities' Resilience and Social Capital

Project Information

BuildERS

Grant agreement ID: 833496

DOI

10.3030/833496

Project closed

EC signature date 26 April 2019

Start date 1 May 2019

End date 30 April 2022

Funded under

• Secure societies - Protecting freedom and security of Europe and its citizens

Total cost

€ 5 076 900,00

EU contribution

€ 4 946 900,00

Coordinated by

TEKNOLOGIAN TUTKIMUSKESKUS VTT OY
Finland

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - BuildERS (Building European Communities' Resilience and Social Capital)

Reporting period: 2020-05-01 to 2022-04-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Supporting societies to prevent, withstand and recover from any crisis or disaster has become a fundamental endeavour for our societies to minimise potential human and material losses. Societal resilience heavily depends on how we behave individually and collectively and how our governments design and implement policies for mitigating risks, preparing for, reacting to, overcoming, and learning from crises. However, resilience building does not often consider the living situation and needs of those most vulnerable in society. There is the need to know more about vulnerabilities, social capital and risk awareness of vulnerable people. The resilience building is not only based on technical and administrative solutions. It should primarily begin by empowering people, groups, communities and societies. Improving our understanding of risks and vulnerabilities, preventing and reducing the likelihood of crises, strengthening capacity building and risk awareness raising, and improving social capital are the cornerstones of societal resilience and the overall resilience building.

Against this societal challenge, BuildERS aimed to improve the resilience within European societies and communities by providing new knowledge on who are the most vulnerable and for which reasons. This was done based on the assumption that a) risk awareness, b) social capital and c) preparedness are core aspects influencing vulnerability.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Key questions (Fig 1) were addressed through:
1. Providing a better understanding of the meaning of vulnerability, resilience, social capital and risk awareness. BuildERS emphasised the interlinkages of these concepts and how they impact societal resilience in man-made and natural disasters. BuildERS model allows to study connections and how vulnerability is a dynamic condition depending on individuals, their socio-economic environment, and the nature of the disaster (Fig 2).
2. Promoting a better understanding of societal resilience as dependent on individual capacities to deal with extreme events. BuildERS proposed that the empowerment of those who are currently most vulnerable increases their potential to (re)act and contribute to crisis management. BuildERS claimed the mitigation of vulnerability caused by discrimination and neglect of essential needs must be fought.
3. Proposing a vulnerability assessment tool to measure and reduce vulnerability and giving recommendations on how to achieve these results. Based on the social diversity of European societies and challenges of different European crisis management systems, BuildERS pointed out a better understanding of the diversity of sources of vulnerability.
4. Producing innovations for practitioners and policy recommendations to enhance the resilience of communities in crises. Residents, first responders, technology developers, policy makers and academics co-designed, co-created and analysed, providing ‘bottom-up’ results via interviews, surveys, questionnaires, comparative research and multiple case analysis.
5. Developing social innovations to build social capital and resilience, like collaboration models and citizens’ self-organisation in the trust networks. BuildERS recommends authorities to strengthen social relationships with vulnerable people and/or their intermediaries via collaborative partnerships while also providing resources and care for those who do not have sufficient social capital.
6. Developing recommendations on how to 1) improve disaster planning and management for vulnerable people, 2) make risk and crisis communication more inclusive and 3) increase social capital.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

BuildERS provides:
1. A more systematic and dynamic understanding of vulnerabilities, with an intersectional perspective: how individual, socio-structural and situation-specific factors hinder comprehending risk, crisis information, risk and crisis communication to adequately react.
2. Advanced understanding of the crisis experiences of the most marginalised people, has demonstrated the significance of trust relations with authorities in shaping the risk and adaptive behaviour. Integrating social care in crisis management is crucial, as intermediaries between the authorities and the individuals. Yet, they are understaffed and under-resourced, as seen in the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. In co-creation with stakeholders, an Inclusive Crisis Management Toolbox was created, with Vulnerability Assessment Tool; Inclusive Crisis Communication Canvas; First Responder Training Package; Board Game for teaching preparedness skills to children; Natural Disaster Mapping Tool; mobile positioning tools (Positium Dashboard, SaveMyLife app); Guidelines for Ethical Assurance in R&I; Ethics Guideline for Policy Makers; Guidelines for Collaborating with Social Media Influencers.
4. A framework for identifying factors of vulnerability related to communication - how people access, understand, and react to information about hazards. Factors cover individual, social-structural, and situation-specific complications. Typology of information harmful for people’s lives, health, or property during the COVID-19 pandemic denote the situation-specific communication-related complications.
5. A demonstration on increased use of social media by disaster managers to reduce vulnerability. Dis- and misinformation are challenge, though. Ad-hoc guidelines help collaboration between disaster managers and social media influencers to increase reach and effectiveness of communication.
6. Sound and ethically appropriate research require standards that involve human participants in line with human dignity, human rights and European values. Potential unwanted consequences should be considered as part of the research, rather than during implementation only. BuildERS ethics framework addressed both, ethics as a perspective on the research and ethics as a research perspective scrutinising the values of technological and social innovations and preventing unwanted side effects.
7. A set of policy recommendations for effective use by practitioners, to enhance community resilience before, during, and after a disaster. Recommendations have been formulated through an iterative process of feedback and validation with policy-makers and other relevant practitioners. Key policy recommendations form policy briefs on how to build resilience in the context of disaster management. Results are presented in a Special Issue in the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction.

BuildERS YouTube channel
What is BuildERS project about? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-SklnKoFxs
BuildERS Interviews:
- Maltese Order (Hungarian with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYBKgrqd2wI
- Mieli Mental health Finland (Finnish with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6-Ckrhy-OPM
- Pirkanmaa branch of the Alzheimer Society of Finland (Finnish with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q39C1N-su_s
- Italian Red Cross (English with subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpYTj28aBIA
Training Course for Law-Enforcement Agencies Officers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEdTyLiDSLo
How can we use mobile positioning data in emergency management? (Estonian with English subtitles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B2WH3g3F30
BuildERS Innovation: Vulnerability Assessment Tool https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCTylxtOwus
Demonstrator: Combining hazard data into maps to support disaster management https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5jBo6cOKbo

Figure3. Examples of BuildERS results

BuildERS logo

Figure2. BuildERS model

Figure1. Operationalization of BuildERS aim