COMMUNITY CONSULTATION REPORT
Creators: name: Selby Knudsen (TRI)
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023
Subjects: Risk Communication, Risk Perception

description: This deliverable provides an overview of the practices undertaken by citizens groups to increase community resilience in their areas. It pulls information from interviews conducted with different types of citizen groups in six of the seven case study areas involved in RiskPACC: Israel, Italy, Czech Republic, Belgium, the UK, and Greece. Their resilience activities are discussed, as well as additional needs they have, ideas for the future, communication with CPAs, and their thoughts on risk perception. Additionally, current tech used in disasters preparaton and response is detailed, along with ideas for future use. These sections are then used for a SWOT analysis. Finally, a discussion on what these interviews highlighted in terms of closing the RPAG and the implication for RiskPACC is undertaken. Chapter 3 provides a summary of the information obtained during the interviews. This summary is divided into sub-sections, each addressing a different aspect of the interviews. The first focuses on the meaning of resilience in communities. Most of the groups interviewed did not use the word resilience in their daily work, either because the citizens did not understand the word, or because other terms such as emergency managment are used in its place. Following this section, the next lays out the activities that citizen groups use to increase resilience. These activities fell into four broad categories: - Risk communication - Trainings (both for the community and for the members of groups) - Preparedness/prevention - Disaster response In terms of risk communication, many of the citizen groups tried to spread information about the risks faced in their communities. These activities ranged from providing brochures to spreading information through schools. The trainings that are conducted typically fell into two categories, trainings for the community and trainings for the members of these citizen groups. The trainings for the community aim to provide information on how to prepare and respond to hazards, while the trainings for members focused more on familiarizing volunteers with disaster management practices in the area, to better integrate into the ongoing DRM work. This chapter then discusses communication between the CPAs and citizen groups. The different groups had varying levels of communication, from none at all to being well integrated into the CPA structure and having good levels of communication. This chapter also discussed risk perception of the community. Most citizen groups agreed that risk perception was very low, although it typically increased after disasters. Chapter 4 highlights the different technologies that are used in prevention and response activities. The first section of this chapter provides an overview of the types of technologies available, from VGI to different social media and crowdsourcing technologies. Following this overview, the report provides more D2.2, Month 6 5 | Page Dissemination Level: PU This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101021271 detailed information on specific technologies that have either been used in a preparation or response capacity, or have the ability to be adapted to do so. These technologies include many of the platforms that will be used or adapted by RiskPACC partners, including the STAM platform. Other tools discussed include the Belgian communication tool, BE-Alert. Finally, opportunities for future use as well as some of the vulerabilities and factors that many limit the uptake of these tools are addressed. Vulnerabilities included a discussion on the digital divide, where the elderly and low income may not have access to these tools and therefore fall further behind. Chapter 5 discusses the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of both the traditional practices discussed by the citizen groups, and the new tools that were highlighted in Chapter 4. For the traditional tools, some of the strengths included the strong sense of community fostered by the groups, the resources available to conduct activities, the good communication with CPAs that some groups have, and the ability to be involved in resilience planning activities. Some of the weaknesses were the lack of communicaiton that some of the groups have with CPAs, the lack of a sense of community encountered by some groups, and a lack of resources to be able to conduct all of the activities they want. Opportunities include the new engagement seen by many citizen groups following the Covid-19 crisis and the desire of communties to receive more information. Threats included the lack of preparedness for a large scale crisis, as well as damaging political influences over crisis management. For the new technological tools, strengths include the more direct involvement of citizens in DRM practices and increased communication between citizens and CPAs. Weaknesses include issues with user retention in many of these tools, as well as the potential to increase the digital divide. Besides these weaknesses, there are also some real threats that these new tools exhibit. First, there is the potential for these apps to be spreading misinformation. There is also the threat that citizens will be used as censors for CPAs, limiting the actual engagement in the process. Despite these threats there are also opportunities in using these tools, including the ability of CPAs to better understand the opinions, beliefs, and perceptions of communities and the ability of these tools to better increase citizen knowledge. Finally, the report ends with discussing ways that this information can be used to address the RPAG. This section highlighted many things that came up in the interviews, including the better engagement of citizens following disasters. This could be the best time to engage citizens to increase awareness and participation in prevention activities. Additionally, almost all of the interviews discussed the need for better ways to interact with CPAs. Most believe that this will increase risk perception among citizens. Finally, the use of new tools to reduce the RPAG was detailed, including the ability to use these tools to increase communication.