Projects

During the past few centuries, human activity has evolved into a geological force that exerts an impact on the world’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, and biosphere that is profound enough to justify the proclamation of a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. This new epoch is characterised by an increasing instability of the environment that becomes most obvious in the elevated likelihood, frequency, and intensity of natural hazards striking in ever more densely populated and tightly interconnected areas, thus putting global societies and economies at a major risk.

While many of these natural hazards cannot be prevented, in disaster research it is beyond doubt that hazard does not equal disaster. Rather, it is the affected community’s immaterial cultural predispositions that determine how hazards are perceived, interpreted, dealt with, and, ultimately, whether or not they trigger disaster. Designing and implementing effective disaster cultures in communities, organisations, and societies thus plays a crucial role in reducing disaster risk and building resilience in the Anthropocene with its predicted increase in likelihood, frequency, and intensity of natural hazards.

Cultural factors that foster resilience and reduce disaster risk include familiarity with certain types of natural hazards, the ability to make sense of the events, effective standardised coping rituals, collaboration in disaster relief, as well as commonly known narratives that preserve knowledge of past hazard events and facilitate learning from them. Our panel at the NEEDS 2021 conference will explore how in-between-disasters spaces can be utilised to employ creative tools like storytelling – from ancient flood myths to disaster movies, future scenarios, and science fiction – as well as gamified or experienced-based learning approaches for disaster risk reduction and the design of emotionally resonant, effective future disaster cultures in societies, organisations, and households.