2. Individual and community preparedness and responses

WP2: Individual and community preparedness and responses

National disaster management systems play an important role in reducing damages and casualties from disaster events. However, structural barriers and psychological, and behavioural differences have often hindered desired evacuation or emergency response in many areas across the world including the developed regions; take for instance the floods that impacted Europe in July 2021. In light of this context, a range of questions arise:

• How can we better prepare individuals and communities towards upcoming weather extreme events?
• What are the determinants that affect individual perception of disaster risks?
• What are the mental health impacts, such as feelings of distress, trauma, fear, anxiety, grief, anger related to natural disasters, extreme climate events, climate change, (anticipated) loss of nature, belongings, family, and friends?
• How can we better support the psychological distresses in different populations (e.g., age cohorts, ethnic groups, gender, geographical variations)?

Such questions are vital for designing adaptation and resilience measures and for addressing barriers to transformation towards a climate resilient future for all. This work package aims to address two main objectives by deploying a set of mixed tool approaches consisting of cross-sectorial and longitudinal analysis frameworks:

1) Understanding response capacity towards  extreme weather events in the recent flood affected regions (BE, NL, DE) and;

2) Assessment of multifaceted impacts on mental health due to climate change/disaster events on a global scale.

Research activity agenda:

• Understand and meta-synthesis up-to-date data and information to enhance individual / community level preparedness and response in the flood affected regions;
• Undertake cross-country comparison of community preparedness, perception and response strategies, in particular for transboundary communities and civil protection authorities.
• Gaps and Needs analysis to support mechanisms and identify how to improve/ build a climate resilient state/community.
• Synthesise with other work packages and further support knowledge dissemination and stakeholder engagement.

Team members

UNU-CRIS

• Nidhi Nagabhatla (co-lead)
• Sisir Bhandari
• Els Beckaert
• Amal Sarsour
• Charlotte Scheerens
• Ilse Ruyssen (Ghent University)
• Tibo Uyttersprot (Ghent University)

UNU-EHS

• Robert Oakes (co-lead)
• Weru Kariuki

UNU-MERIT

• Sanae Okamoto (co-lead)
• Michaella Vanore
• Serdar Turkeli
• Sonja Fransen
• Kelly Vrijens
• Alicia Grace Stenzel
• Aiswarya Augus