Risk Interpretation and Action (RIA)
The focus of the Risk Interpretation and Action (RIA) Working Group is on the question of how people – both decision-makers and ordinary citizens – make decisions, individually and collectively, in the face of risk. There are several broad fields of work that are relevant to this question, but many of these have progressed somewhat independently of each other, typically within the framework of single academic disciplines. This has led to a number of discontinuities in how the issue of risk reduction is conceptualized, as well as gaps in the areas where research activity (and funding) is presently concentrated. The result is a number of unanswered questions that involve diverse fields:
- How can risk reduction policies and practices be generalized across hazards or to combinations of hazards, as well as across cultures?
- How much emphasis should be placed on risk forecasting versus communication?
- Why and when do local citizens’ evaluations of risks diverge from scientific forecasts?
- How do people’s decisions, perhaps due to social norms and perceived or actual constraints on their freedom of choice, diverge from their evaluations of such risks?
- Within policy and planning, what priority is given to protection and restoration of existing infrastructure, rather than redesign for greater resilience or prevention?
To fully answer these questions, the RIA Working Group hopes to advance interdisciplinary research on human decision-making and how it relates to hazards, and encourage organizations to support this area of disaster risk research.
To download RIA report click here
Co-sponsors
IPO Host
