Project News

How can we best prepare ourselves to deal with disasters? How can we build a better, more effective crisis management strategy, with the help of modern technology?

We charted the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries – Germany, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Estonia – to reveal significant differences across countries in terms of the meanings of vulnerability, its sources, reduction strategies, and the allocation of related duties.

During emergencies, exposure to false information can increase individual vulnerability. Our study contributes to a better understanding of how the effects of false information are mitigated by the emergency management systems in Europe.

The outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease COVID-19 propelled the creation, transmission, and consumption of false information – unverified claims, misleading statements, false rumours, conspiracy theories, and so on – all around the world.

The ongoing world pandemic highlighted that even a most universal threat is still disproportionally affecting vulnerable groups.

Understanding communication - related vulnerability and resilience in crises 

Engaging citizens, volunteers, authorities and NGOs, and combining their practical experiences with research results is one of the main approaches of BuildERS project.

Understanding resilience in the context of vulnerability is a challenge for both researchers and policy makers

BuildERS is conducting ongoing interviews with vulnerable groups who are clients of The Salvation Army and other social service providers in Europe.

The concept of social vulnerability has been increasingly applied in disaster literature, but its communicative drivers have remained understudied.

Interested in reading full reports on the work we carried out with our partners in topics related to vulnerability, resilience and risk awareness?

This article promotes the application of the intersectionality perspective in the study of vulnerable groups, and calls for intersectionality as a guiding principle in risk and crisis management, to provide a better and more nuanced picture of vulnerabilities and vulnerable groups.