Culture and disaster risk management - synthesis of citizens’ reactions and opinions during 6 Citizen Summits : Romania, Malta, Italy, Germany, Portugal and the Netherlands

Abstract

The analyses and results in this document are based on the data collected during six Citizen Summits held in A) Romania (Bucharest) on July 9th, 2016 B) Malta on July 16th, 2016 C) Italy (Rome) on June 17th, 2017 D) Germany (Frankfurt) on June 24th, 2017 E) Portugal (Lisbon) April 14th, 2018 F) The Netherlands (Utrecht)on May 12th, 2018. All Citizen Summits were designed as one-day events combining public information with feedback gathering through different methods of data collection, as laid out in Deliverable D5.1 (Structural design & methodology for Citizen Summits). A total of 619 citizens participated in the six events. In the morning session, the Citizen Summits started with a presentation of the CARISMAND project and its main goals and concepts. Then, several sets of questions with pre-defined answer options were posed to the audience and responses collected via an audience response system. All questions in this part of the event aimed to explore citizens’ attitudes, perceptions, and intended behaviours related to disasters and disaster risks. Between these sets of questions, additional presentations were held that informed the audience about state-of-the-art disaster preparedness and response topics (e.g., large-scale disaster scenario exercises, use of social media and mobile phone apps), as well as CARISMAND research findings. Furthermore, the last round of Citizen Summits (CS5 in Lisbon and CS6 in Utrecht) were organised and designed to additionally discuss and collect feedback on recommendations for citizens, which have all been formulated on the basis of Work Packages 2-10 results and in coordination with the Work Package 11 brief. These Toolkit recommendations will form one of the core elements of the Work Package 9 CARISMAND Toolkit. In the afternoon session of each event, small moderated group discussions (with 8-12 participants each) of approximately 2 hours’ duration were held, which aimed to gather citizens’ direct feedback on the topics presented in the morning sessions, following a detailed discussion guideline. For a detailed overview of all questions asked and topics discussed, please see Appendices A-1 to A-3. The rest of this report is structured in six main sections: After the executive summary and this introduction, the third section will present an overview of the different methods applied. The fourth section will provide a synthesis of quantitative and qualitative data collected during all Citizen Summits. The fifth section will present the evaluation of CARISMAND Toolkit recommendations for citizens, followed by a final concluding chapter.