Abstract
This concluding chapter discusses the relevance of the different ideas about hazard risk perception, written about in the rest of this book, to the practice of disaster risk management, particularly with regard to current moves to encourage community-based resilience. It identifies the diversity of views about how risk is perceived and how to study risk perception, noting the importance of socio-cultural factors in understandings of risk. It questions the relevance of much of the risk perception research carried out in high-income countries to the situations of poor and vulnerable people in low-income countries, who in addition to living with natural hazards have to manage many other threats to their daily well-being and livelihoods. The implications of these discussions for public education about risk are examined, as are related issues of responsibility, authority and trust.
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This discussion of ideas of ‘home’, which focuses on social representations of the home in Western societies, suggests an important line of disaster research which does not feature much in the literature on risk perception and risk management. Comparisons with non-Western societies would also be instructive.
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Twigg, J. (2013). Risk Perception, Public Education and Disaster Risk Management. In: Joffe, H., Rossetto, T., Adams, J. (eds) Cities at Risk. Advances in Natural and Technological Hazards Research, vol 33. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6184-1_10
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