6th European Workshop on Risk Perception, Behaviour, Management and Response (ECRP26)

San Giobbe
Economics Campus
Venice Ca’ Foscari University
AULA PARTESOTTI
JUNE 08-10

Workshop description
The EU vision of a disaster and climate-resilient society cannot be achieved by relying on “behaviour-blind” assessments, modelling, and policy frameworks. Evidence increasingly shows that behaviour shapes risk outcomes in ways that hazards alone cannot explain. However, current risk assessments, models, and simulations often fail to account for how the actions of individuals, businesses, and public services before, during, and after a crisis influence damage levels, recovery processes, and overall resilience. Subsequently, they remain poorly understood and difficult to formalise. Moreover, behavioural dynamics can act as potential risk amplifiers or wildcards, triggering cascading effects and potentially leading to systemic failures and risk propagation across systems and sectors.
While the importance of a systemic approach to risk and resilience is widely acknowledged (IPCC, 2022; UNDRR, 2015), research still remains fragmented. Many studies operate in disciplinary silos: some focus on biophysical or environmental processes, while others examine social or behavioural dimensions. As a result,
insights often evolve in parallel, without a coherent framework to integrate societal behaviour and decision-making with biophysical dynamics. In addition, most risk assessments still rely on conventional frameworks based on hazard, exposure, and vulnerability, while overlooking the crucial role of societal “response” – the
capacity of individuals, communities, and institutions to anticipate, adapt, and react to risk – (IPCC, 2021).
Explicitly incorporating response as a fourth driver of risk can strengthen the social construction of risk perspective and help bridge the gap between risk science and practical resilience planning. At the same time, many modelling approaches remain disconnected from empirical data, limiting their applicability in real-world
contexts and constraining the comparability and generalisability of findings across scales and settings.
Despite growing recognition of these challenges, the integration of behavioural dynamics into policies, risk management practices, and modelling frameworks – and their transferability across contexts – is still not satisfactory. Addressing this gap requires a broader and more diverse theoretical foundation to improve model
integration, deepen understanding of risk and adaptation processes, and enable cross-validation of case studies. Addressing these challenges requires new thinking across disciplines.
This workshop sets out to bridge that gap and explore how behavioural dynamics, risk perception, and societal response can be integrated into systemic risk and resilience modelling. During the event, we will highlight recent advances in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) research, covering integrated modelling approaches and case studies that address real-world challenges.
The workshop will explore both qualitative and quantitative approaches for incorporating behavioural factors into risk assessments, including risk storylines, survey-based studies, AI-enabled risk applications, Agent-Based Modelling, and empirical validation techniques. The workshop emphasises co-development of solutions
by engaging relevant stakeholders and risk owners from the design stage, ensuring models reflect actual decision-making challenges.
By integrating insights from EU and international projects, the workshop will foster forward-looking discussions on improving systemic risk assessment, enhancing resilience planning, and identifying effective strategies for climate adaptation and disaster risk management.

Workshop format
• Presentations on the state-of-the-art risk and resilience analysis and applications from EU and international projects.
• Moderated discussions and working groups on key research questions.
• Collaborative sessions to explore new ideas for future project proposals.

The conference benefits from the support of the ERC FiBeGa Grant.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.