sCience& human factOr for Resilient sociEty (CORE)

CORE (sCience& human factOr for Resilient sociEty) is a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary consortium established to address the call SU-DRS01-2018-2019-2020 for disaster-resilient societies. It builds upon the activities and results of previous and ongoing projects, with a focus on understanding how to define common metrics for different natural and man-made disaster scenarios. The project is driven by end-users within the consortium and their wider stakeholder networks, ensuring practical applications of research findings.

The primary goal of CORE is to provide fundamental knowledge that enhances awareness, knowledge, and actions regarding the role of human factors, social dynamics, societal aspects, and organizational factors in disaster risk management and community recovery. The project's scope includes analyzing specific risks of natural and anthropogenic origin, including cascade effects, for various disaster scenarios such as earthquakes, tsunamis, fires, floods, terrorist attacks, industrial accidents, and the Covid-19 pandemic. With a special focus on vulnerable populations, the project aims to make these communities more aware and prepared to face disasters.

CORE adopts a transdisciplinary approach by fostering collaboration between hard and social science communities. This collaboration aims to support and integrate environmental science research with social science insights to address disaster resilience effectively. By combining expertise from both fields, the project seeks to understand and measure the impact of human, social, and societal factors in disaster risk perception and management.

To achieve its objectives, CORE focuses on specific pillars and building blocks. The pillars include hard science, social science, and societal acceptance, forming the basis for a harmonized resilience planning framework. The building blocks encompass safety culture, social media support and threats to community resilience, understanding human behavior in disaster situations, the role of community identity as a resilience factor, cascading effects, and effective governance in disaster risk reduction.

In addition to addressing disaster scenarios and dynamics, CORE identifies specific objectives, such as developing a crisis modeling framework to describe disasters based on human, social, and societal variables, and establishing indicators to assess the weight of human and societal factors in societal resilience to disasters. The project also explores the efficient use of social media in disaster situations and provides guidance materials to improve preparedness, adaptability, and resilience among all social groups. The consortium includes partners from eight EU countries, Switzerland, the UK, and Israel, encompassing research institutions, SMEs, first responders, and a municipality association. This diversity of expertise ensures a holistic and comprehensive approach to disaster resilience.

The Cooperative and Transformative Governance (CAT) research group of the Advancing Systems Analysis (ASA) program contributes to CORE by leading a work package on social media information/misinformation and risk. This involves analyzing and managing the flow of accurate information and identifying misinformation on social media platforms, which is crucial for timely and effective response to emergencies. The findings may support the development of strategies to combat and correct misinformation, thereby strengthening community preparedness and response capabilities against various hazards.