Predicting weather and climate risk perception and preparedness around the world: What’s the same, what’s different?

Predicting weather and climate risk perception and preparedness around the world: What’s the same, what’s different?

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Abstract

Over the past 50 years there has been a fivefold increase in recorded weather-related disasters, with the World Meteorological Organisation attributing two-million deaths and US$ 3.64 trillion in losses to these events. This highlights the urgent need for effective early warning systems and communication strategies to help people to reduce their risk from harm. To understand how severe weather warnings can be most effectively communicated, we need to understand the current drivers of weather risk perception and preparedness amongst target audiences. However, despite a vast body of work existing in this area, findings are not always consistent across studies, raising questions as to whether this is due to methodological differences or reflective of important cultural and contextual distinctions in how risk is perceived and responded on.

In a project funded by the Lloyds Register Foundation, we integrated data from the 2019, 2021 and 2023 World Risk Polls (n > 100,000 per round) with country-level data on disasters (EM-DAT), governance (World Governance Indicators), GDP and climate vulnerability indicators (ND-GAIN) to identify which factors identified in the risk perception literature are globally consistent predictors of risk perception and preparedness and which differ across countries. In this talk I present key findings from this analysis, their implications for risk communication and how we will use this to develop and test new warning communication strategies in a set of focal countries.

Speaker 

Andrea Taylor is an Associated Professor in Risk Communication holding joint posts at Leeds University Business School’s Centre for Decision Research (Analytics Technology and Operations Department) and the School for Earth and Environment’s Sustainability Research Institute. Coming from a background in the psychology of judgement and decision making, much of her research focusses on decision support and communication in the context of weather and climate information services. She currently sits on the advisory panel of two of the World Meteorological Organisation's World Weather Research Programme initiatives (InPRHA and PEOPLE) and holds funding from the Lloyds Register Foundation’s Turning the World Risk Poll into Action programme to explore weather warning communication for disaster risk reduction.