With the increase in disasters caused by climate change in Europe, awareness and information campaigns have also expanded to increase knowledge of these risks and the level of preparedness of the population. How effective are they? Are they consistent and coordinated with each other? Do they pursue the same goals?
The preparEU project, funded by DG-ECHO and carried out by CIMA Research Foundation, wants to start answering these questions. It starts with an initial mapping and assessment of the different communication and awareness-raising initiatives on natural hazards, trying to identify their strengths and weaknesses in order to hypotize criteria and elements to guide the strategies and planning of a future pan-European initiative.
How does the project work?
Increasing the public’s awareness and preparedness, for example by indicating the correct behaviors to follow in case of a disaster and disseminating the appropriate scientific information, are key elements of risk mitigation. Moreover, the public involvement plays a key role in managing the emergency cycle, not only because it fosters a spread of knowledge but also because it helps legitimize institutional decisions and promotes their acceptance. Risk communication and awareness campaigns aimed at increasing the prevention and preparedness capacity of the citizenry operate.operate in this direction. Such campaigns are increasingly widespread in the EU, and thus provide plenty of examples and experiences to draw on. Still, they have never been systematically collected and analyzed. This makes it difficult to assess their overall effectiveness and, moreover, prevents their coordination at the European level (even taking into account social and cultural differences).
For this reason preparEU Mapping and Feasibility Study, which started in July 2023 and is scheduled to end in March 2024, aims to map the risk communication initiatives carried out in the EU and the most significant non-EU examples, from which to identify good practices that can possibly be applied on a European scale as well. These will be analyzed comparatively, to identify their strengths and weaknesses and, on this basis, propose strategies for future campaigns. The evaluation criteria follow criteria established on the basis of the scientific literature and which aim to be understandable even to an audience that is not an expert in the field of communication (such as that represented by civil protection workers).
What are the expected results?
- Database with collected and classified good practices
- Analysis of good practices scalable to the European campaign level
- Position paper on possible risk awareness and communication initiatives to be pursued at the European level
- Multimedia presentation on the main findings and recommendations of the study
What does CIMA Research Foundation do?
Within the project, we will pursue the mapping of risk communication campaigns through the review of relevant literature, studies and statistics and also through mass media analysis, selecting the most representative countries and civil protection systems involved. From the selected initiatives, categorized by type (e.g., events, awareness campaigns, information campaigns, etc.), at least ten best practices will then be identified and analyzed, based on the “5 W rule” of journalism (when they were conducted, who was involved, what strategies were employed, why they were carried out, where and how), based on criteria inspired by the European Union Disaster Goals (which include, for example, sustainability, taking more than one type of risk into account, inclusiveness, evidence-based features).
Based on the data collected, we then move on to the evaluation phase, which first involves a time of discussion with stakeholders and experts in the field of civil protection to see if they would be applicable at the European scale. Then, including through meetings and online interviews, we will assess for the identified good practices the strengths and weaknesses, potential for replicability at the European scale, resources needed, economic-financial implications, and monitoring and effectiveness indicators.