Culture and disaster risk management - synthesis of stakeholder attitudes during 3 Stakeholder Assemblies in Romania, Italy and Portugal

This report provides a synthesis of the results of three CARISMAND Stakeholder Assemblies held in A) Bucharest,Romania on April 14-15, 2016; B) Rome,Italy on February 27-28, 2017; and C) Lisbon,Portugal on February 27-28, 2018. These Stakeholder Assemblies, together with six Citizen Summits (see Deliverables D5.3 – D5.9) were part of the CARISMAND cycle of events (see Figure 1 below). This cycle of events was the key concept at the core of the CARISMAND project which aimed to ensure a comprehensive feedback loop betweendisaster practitioners and citizens. It also allowed for the progression of ideas co-created by disaster practitioners and citizens. The locations of the three Stakeholder Assemblies were chosen due to their rather different “backgrounds”. The three countries had been struck at the time of the respective event by different types of disasters. In addition, the three countries have very different “cultures”, or cultural impacts, at a societal level. Romania has a comparatively strong authoritative systems due to its political history; Italy has experienced a strong direct in-flow of migrants in the last years due to its geological location; and Portugal has long been a traditional “melting pot” where, over more than a millennium, people from different cultural backgrounds and ethnic origins (in particular North Africa, South America, and Europe) have lived together. Accordingly, these differences were expected to allow a wide range of practitioners’ attitudes and perceptions related to cultural factors in disaster management to emerge. In order to not only gather a variety of attitudes and perceptions but also promote cross-sectional knowledge transfer, the audience in all three events consisted of a wide range of practitioners who are typically involved in disaster management, e.g., civil protection agencies , the emergency services, paramedics, nurses, environmental protection agencies, the Red Cross, firefighters, the military, and the police. Further, these practitioners were from several regions in the respective country; in Portugal, the Stakeholder Assembly also included practitioners from the island of Madeira. The 40-60 participants per event were recruited via invitations sent to various organisations and institutions that play a role in disaster management, and via direct contacts of local partners in the CARISMAND consortium. Each assembly consisted of a mix of presentations and discussion groups to combine dissemination with information gathering (for detailed schedules see Appendices A1-A3). In an initial general assembly, the event started with presentations of the CARISMAND project and its main goals and concepts. Then, participants were split into small working groups in separate breakout rooms, where they discussed and provided feedback on a specific topic. After each working group session, panel discussions allowed the participants to present the results of their working group to the rest of the audience. After each panel discussion, keynote speakers gave presentations related to the topic that had been discussed during the working groups. This schedule was designed to ensure that participants are provided with detailed information about recent developments in disaster management, but without influencing the attitudes and perceptions expressed in the working groups. In the third Stakeholder Assembly, different sets of recommendations for practitioners (related to the use of cultural factors in disaster management) were presented to the general audience, followed by small discussion group sessions as described above.The project was co-funded by the European Commission within the Horizon2020 Programme (2014–2020).peer-reviewe

Cross-Border Collaboration in Disaster Management

Wenn sich eine Katastrophe ereignet, ist eine schnelle und koordinierte Reaktion der verschiedenen Krisenmanagementakteure unerlässlich, um die vorhandenen Ressourcen bestmöglich einzusetzen und somit ihre Auswirkungen zu begrenzen. Dieses Zusammenspiel wird erschwert, wenn die Katastrophe mehrere Länder betrifft. Neben den unterschiedlichen Regelungen und Systemen spielen dann auch kulturelle Einflüsse wie Sprachbarrieren oder mangelndes Vertrauen eine entscheidende Rolle. Obwohl die Resilienz von Grenzgebieten von fundamentaler Bedeutung ist, wird diese in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur immer noch unterschätzt. Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit wird ein agentenbasiertes Modell zur Untersuchung der organisationsübergreifenden Zusammenarbeit bei Katastropheneinsätzen in einer Grenzregion vorgestellt. Indem Kommunikationsprotokolle aus der Literatur auf den Kontext der grenzüberschreitenden Kooperation erweitert werden, analysiert das Modell die globale Dynamik, die aus lokalen Entscheidungen resultiert. Ein szenariobasierter Ansatz zeigt, dass höheres Vertrauen zwar zu signifikant besseren Versorgungsraten führt, der Abbau von Sprachbarrieren aber noch effizienter ist. Insbesondere gilt dies, wenn die Akteure die Sprache des Nachbarlandes direkt sprechen, anstatt sich auf eine allgemeine Lingua franca zu verlassen. Die Untersuchung der Koordination zeigt, dass Informationsflüsse entlang der hierarchischen Organisationsstruktur am erfolgreichsten sind, während spontane Zusammenarbeit durch ein etabliertes informelles Netzwerk privater Kontakte den Informationsaustausch ergänzen und in dynamischen Umgebungen einen Vorteil darstellen kann. Darüber hinaus verdoppelt die Einbindung von Spontanfreiwilligen den Koordinationsaufwand. Die Koordination über beide Dimensionen, zum einen die Einbindung in den Katastrophenschutz und zum anderen über Grenzen hinweg, führt jedoch zu einer optimalen Versorgung der betroffenen Bevölkerung. In einem zweiten Teil stellt diese Arbeit ein innovatives empirisches Studiendesign vor, das auf transnationalem Sozialkapital und Weiners Motivationstheorie basiert, um prosoziale Beziehungen der Menschen über nationale Grenzen hinweg zu quantifizieren. Regionale Beziehungen innerhalb der Länder werden dabei als Vergleichsbasis genommen. Die mittels repräsentativer Telefoninterviews in Deutschland, Frankreich und der deutsch-französischen Grenzregion erhobenen Daten belegen die Hypothese, dass das Sozialkapital und die Hilfsbereitschaft über die deutsch-französische Grenze hinweg mindestens so hoch ist wie das regionale Sozialkapital und die Hilfsbereitschaft innerhalb der jeweiligen Länder. Folglich liefert die Arbeit wertvolle Erkenntnisse für Entscheidungsträger, um wesentliche Barrieren in der grenzüberschreitenden Kooperation abzubauen und damit die grenzüberschreitende Resilienz bei zukünftigen Katastrophen zu verbessern. Implikationen für die heutige Zeit in Bezug auf Globalisierung versus aufkommendem Nationalismus sowie Auswirkungen von (Natur-) Katastrophen werden diskutiert

2012 Abstract Booklet

Complete Schedule of Events for the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium at Minnesota State University, Mankato

Persuasion, Police, and Public Safety: Message Framing, Compliance, and Perceptions of Law Enforcement

In the everyday interactions between law enforcement and the citizens of their communities, officers attempt to gain compliance verbally, before resorting to physical force, if necessary. This dissertation examined the use of persuasive verbal messages by law enforcement officers when encountering citizens. These messages were created to represent a progression of asking, telling, and making, to gain compliance from an individual.;The officers in this study were university police officers, because university police departments are charged with providing a safe learning environment on campus. Due to the visible, community oriented policing in which university police departments tend to engage, it is likely that students would have an interaction with a campus police officer, and that this interaction might call for an officer to make a request or demand of the student. Furthermore, given the ubiquity of communication technology (e.g., social media) on college campuses, it is likely that police and students would communicate not only in-person, but also via computer-mediated channels.;The study in this dissertation utilized a 3 (ask, tell, make) X 2 (emergency, nonemergency) X 2 (face-to-face, computer-mediated communication) experimental design, in which participants (N = 190) were assigned randomly to one of 12 conditions. The measured outcomes were propensity to comply with a police officer, perceptions of the police officer, and perceptions of the officer\u27s conversational appropriateness.;Results indicated a significant main effect for message manipulation, such that participants rated perceptions of officer conversational appropriateness and perceptions of law enforcement more favorably when the hypothetical officer used an ask-framed message, rather than a make-framed message. Furthermore, the results indicated a significant main effect for communication channel, such that participants perceived the police officer to be more conversationally appropriate in the FtF condition than in the CMC condition. Additional post-hoc results, theoretical implications, practical applications, limitations, and future directions for research in this area of communication studies are discussed

Full Issue: Volume 15

Variante(s) de titre : Femmes françaisesEtat de collection : 1944-194

The client, counsellor and organisational components of an external workplace counselling service : an evaluation

This is a study of work place counselling. It responded to four key stimulants: (1) the paucity of workplace counselling evaluations; (2) the need to more fully incorporate the client and organisation into evaluations; (3) the call for an increased qualitative focus in counselling research; (4) the need for practitioners to become research-minded.The site was the Northern Ireland Fire Brigade's (NIFB) external counselling service. The study was inspired by the concept of the workplace counselling triangle - of client, counsellor and organisation. It explores the degree of congruence across the aims, needs, expectations and evaluations of each of the three facets; the aim being to ascertain whether the NIFB 's counselling provision meets the needs of its three primary stakeholders?A qualitative methodology was adopted, with stakeholder perspectives captured by semi-structured interviews. Counselling process assessments, sick absence analysis and a workforce awareness survey were also conducted.The counselling service was dramatically effective from the client perspective. Counsellors, while satisfied with their client work had reservations about organisational links. Their wish for greater primary intervention was matched by the NIFB being surprised that they were not more proactive at this level! A need for effective organisational induction and terms of engagement were identified, so as to allow counsellors to move beyond the personal counselling role. The observed reduction in absenteeism post-counselling was a dividend for the organisation.Although the NIFB counselling service does not currently meet all stakeholder needs, it has been shown to be significantly effective in both human and financial terms. The service is needed, period