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The risk landscape in the EU is changing. New threats have emerged such as the Covid19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, while accelerating climate change leads to increases in extreme weather events and natural hazards such as droughts, wildfires, floods, and landslides with some regions exposed to multiple emergencies simultaneously. This increase and complexity of threats requires a heightened level of disaster preparedness and resilience from all actors and citizens in the EU.
To build a resilient Europe, we need to better understand citizens’ response to emergencies and investigate ways to stimulate constructive emergency behaviours, including preparedness and response.
Taking into account the shift in risk exposure, the European Commission issued a Recommendation and a Communication in 2023 to establish common goals to boost disaster resilience in the areas of civil protection. Five disaster resilience goals address the need to improve the capacity of the Union and its Member States to ‘Anticipate’, ‘Prepare’, ‘Alert’, ‘Respond’, and ‘Secure’ for and in the event of disasters and crises. Behavioural insights are particularly important for increasing awareness and preparedness of citizens, as stated under ‘Prepare’, to improve individual and societal resilience.
In March 2025, the Commission published the Preparedness Union Strategy . It includes 30 key actions and a detailed Action Plan to advance the Preparedness Union's objectives, inlcuding promoting population preparedness, as well as developing a ‘preparedness by design culture' across all EU policies.
Behavioural factors are relevant both before (the ‘cold phase’) and during (the ‘hot phase’) a potential disaster. We are currently working on projects that address both these phases, and especially looking at factors that could be addressed in the ‘cold phase’ and may positively impact resilience in the ‘hot phase’.
Encouraging disaster preparedness behaviour
Susceptibility to misinformation during disasters
Being prepared for Europe’s changing risk landscape is essential to building societal resilience. Special Eurobarometer 547 pinpoints several areas of improvement in population preparedness, now addressed through key actions under the Preparedness Union Strategy.
Knowledge Primer: Why are behavioural insights important for whole-of-society disaster preparedness?
Even if well informed, there can be other factors that influence people's actions, often leading to less rational and more emotionally driven choices. Behavioural and social sciences aim to understand the factors that influence individual’s decision-making and behaviour. They can thus help design solutions that align with how people process information and make decisions, ensuring that preparedness efforts are accessible, motivating, and easy to act on ultimately resulting in effective disaster resilience activities. By addressing behavioural barriers, behavioural insights can motivate stakeholders to act on these high-return investments reaching predominantly more cost-effective solutions according to benefit-cost ratio (BCR) studies.
