In 2018 CARISMAND has reached the last round of public meetings with citizens planned within the project. The Sixth Citizen Summit was held on 12 May 2018 in Utrecht and gathered 89 local residents around topics of crucial importance in crisis situations.
Each CARISMAND Citizen Summit deals with a number of specific topics related to different types of disasters and places at the centre of attention particular aspects that affect culturally informed disaster risk perceptions. During each event quantitative and qualitative data is also collected which will allow the CARISMAND team to undertake a comprehensive analysis of the citizens’ reactions and opinions on the topics discussed.
Following the format of the previous Citizen Summits, the event combined presentations with real-time voting system to receive instant responses from the audience, and also engaged the attendees in group discussions focused on particular cases of disaster situations.
Specific topics for the fifth edition were: how citizens can improve their own and their family’s and friends’ disaster preparedness by developing a personal “culture of preparedness”, and how citizens, in general, can get engaged and take part in disaster preparedness and response activities.
In the end of the day participants were informed on the results of their voting, and could compare them with the answers received in previous Citizen Summits, namely the ones in Bucharest and Malta (July 2016), Rome and Frankfurt (June 2017) and Lisbon (April 2018).
The event was chaired by Prof. Noellie Brockdorff and Dr Sandra Appleby-Arnold from the University of Malta. Special materials for some of the themes was designed by LIBRe Foundation’s team, while Ms Alexandra Tsvetkova (LIBRe Foundation) presented the CARISMAND Toolkit design within the Citizen Recommendations' Section.
