Measuring resilience in communities is by no means a straight forward exercise. Despite having well constituted institutional risk frameworks covering the majority of disasters, affected communities are often faced with their own peculiar set of risks and challenges. This includes the way human responses to an emergency can disrupt, or in other situations enhance, the effectiveness of local disaster response strategies.

Professor Alexander Fekete (left), Karsten Uhing (middle), Dr. Samuel Roufat (right)

From a scientific point of view, studying citizens’ risk perception seems relevant, as it could predict how they are likely to prepare for, or respond to, such adverse situations. Thus, it could be assumed that people who are more aware of the particular risks affecting their community or region are more likely to be prepared for them and be more resilient to particular disasters. This would mean that local areas can increase their resilience by making citizens more aware of the risks facing them.

However, measuring citizens’ risk perception is not the ‘magic bullet’ – the relationship between perceptions of risk and how citizens are likely to behave before, during or after an emergency is complex and likely to be influenced by other factors such as their age, wealth, mobility or previous experience of similar emergencies. These complex links and relationships are currently being investigated further by Tavistock Institute staff via a literature review, case studies in four areas, and an online survey on risk perception as part of the RESILOC project:

They were also explored in a meeting on 17th January 2020 at the Technical University of Cologne between RESILOC partners from Fraunhofer and Tavistock Institutes with Professor Alexander Fekete (Technical University of Applied Science Cologne) and Dr. Samuel Roufat (University of Cergy-Pontoise) – two of the main organizers of the European Conference on Risk Perception.

The meeting confirmed the complexity of studying the relationship between risk perception and citizens’ behaviour before, during or after an emergency – with many academics and experts currently struggling to measure this relationship. It was agreed that the most likely scalable indicator of such behaviour is individuals’ previous experience of disasters – how recently and how often they have experienced a disaster first-hand. Professor Fekete and Dr Roufat also offered their valuable input into further efforts to develop such indicators as part of the RESILOC tool to measure the resilience of communities as part of the project.

Karsten Uhing presenting the RESILOC project to he heads behind the European Conference on Risk Perception (ECRP)

We are looking forward to continued cooperation with the ECRP and its members with the ultimate joint aim to contribute to the protection of EU citizens from impacts of disasters through needs driven innovations, in line with the strategic objectives of the Horizon 2020 programme and the relevant global strategies.

Categories: News

Associated Risks - RA1

Catania- Workshops on Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies


There are no foreseen physical, mental or reputational risks related to participation in this workshop.

Your participation will be treated in confidence. RESILOC may use quotes from the Q&A in publications but these will be anonymised and any personal information that could be used to identify you will be removed.

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Associated Risks - RA2

Catania – Validation Workshops


There are no foreseen physical, mental or reputational risks related to participation in this workshop.

Your participation will be treated in confidence. RESILOC may use quotes from the Q&A in publications but these will be anonymised and any personal information that could be used to identify you will be removed.

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RA 1 - Selection of participants

Catania- Workshops on Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies


Participation in the Catania Workshop on Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies is voluntary but restricted to members of the Community of Catania assigned to the RESILOC Project.

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RA 2 - Selection of participants

Catania – Validation Workshops


Participation in the Catania Validation Workshop is voluntary but restricted to members of the Community of Catania assigned to the RESILOC Project.

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RA 2 - General

Catania – Validation Workshops


The goal of the research activity is to collect and evaluate the results of the three workshops of phase one. This will be carried out through a questionnaire (Validation tool 1.1) that is organised in two parts (10 questions in total).

The first section evaluates the relevance/applicability of DIP (dimensions, indicators and  proxies) in the context of Catania.

The second section collects feedback on the role of scenarios as a tool for testing the validity of the DIP system and collects information on the clarity and understanding of the data gathering process. You are asked to receive and complete the questionnaire submitted by the Local Training Lead, returning it back by email before and no later than Monday 07/02/2022.

The RESILOC research team will use the answers you provide to further refine the development of the resilience tool that aims to improve the resilience of local communities.

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RA1 - Overview Catania

Catania - Workshops on Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies


The workshop will be a mixed meeting, with both in-person and remote participants, and led by the Local Training Lead. The Local Training Lead will introduce the participants to the theoretical framework developed.

This activity will be performed via a PowerPoint presentation that aims to explain the scientific/research framework of RESILOC, introducing the DIP database and the logic behind it. During the presentation, the Local Training Lead will explore participants views, in particular on the approach of using dimensions, indicators and proxies to capture the resilience of a community; this will be done through dedicated Q&A sessions during specific moments of the workshop.

The purpose is to make the representatives of the Municipality and the LRT members able to evaluate the applicability of the framework in terms of relevance, feasibility, data availability, among others for the community of Catania.

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RA1 - Privacy, confidentiality and personal data handling

Catania- Workshops on Dimensions, Indicators and Proxies


For this particular research activity, we collect the following personal data in order to have a better understanding of your opinion and perspective.:

  • name
  • organisation
  • community name
  • email
  • phone number (optional)

We would also like to make a video recording of the workshop (optional), which will only be used to aid us to improve the analysis of the answers you provide.

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RA 2 - Privacy, confidentiality and personal data handling

Catania – Validation Workshops


For this particular research activity, we collect the following personal data in order to have a better understanding of your opinion and perspective:

  • name
  • organisation
  • community name
  • email
  • phone number (optional)

We would also like to make a video recording of the workshop (optional), which will only be used to aid us to improve the analysis of the answers you provide.

The data collected will be stored on the IES server, protected by data security protocols, for a maximum of 2 years (up to one year after the end of the project).

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