CARISMAND Citizens Summits are events which seek the opinion of local residents in different parts of Europe on disaster-related topics. The discussed topics in focus are based upon particular disaster risks that are prevalent in the respective locations. They place at the centre of attention specific aspects that affect culturally informed disaster risk perceptions. The main purpose of each event is to collect enough quantitative and qualitative data in order for CARISMAND team to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the citizens’ reactions and opinions on the topics discussed.
The third out of six Citizen Summits planned within CARISMAND project took place in Rome on 17 June 2017. The event followed the format of the First and Second Citizen Summits which were held in July 2016 in Bucharest and Malta.
Participants were first introduced to the concept of CARISMAND project and the three phases of disaster management – preparedness, response, and recovery. Then they were invited to share their experience and opinion on a set of questions, using a voting system for real-time response. The questions related both to attendees’ past experience and to their risk perception, and attitudes towards the use of different technologies in the case of disaster.
In the second half of the day participants were allocated into 10 discussion groups within which specific cases of disaster management practices were tackled in depth.
The Citizen Summit in Rome was finalised with a recap of the day and summary of the voting results from the morning session which were compared with the results from the Citizen Summits in Bucharest and Malta.
The event was chaired by Prof. Noellie Brockdorff and Dr. Sandra Appleby-Arnold from the University of Malta, and Celia Callus from Nutcracker Research Ltd, UK.
The next Citizen Summit is to be held in Frankfurt, Germany, on 24 June 2017.
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