CapHaz-Net: Social Capacity Building for Natural Hazards – Towards More Resilient Societies

Flood in a Swiss town (Courtesy Michael Bründl, SLF)

CapHaz-Net is a Coordination action that will be funded by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission, Theme 6 "Environment (including Climate Change)".

CapHaz-Net will contribute to the improvement of the social resilience of European societies to natural hazards by suggesting ways of how to do this. Improving the resilience is, above all, to be accomplished by strengthening social capacities.
By social capacity we mean the societal assets, skills and resources necessary to anticipate, cope with and recover from stresses and disasters.    

The overall objectives of CapHaz-Net are:

• To identify and assess existing practices and policies for social capacity building in the field of natural hazards at all societal levels across Europe for elaborating strategies and recommendations for activities to improve social capacity building in order to enhance the resilience of European societies and communities to the impacts of natural hazards.
• To identify further research needs in these fields.

The main research themes CapHaz-Net will deal with include:

risk perception, social vulnerability, risk communication, risk education, societal resilience, social capacity building and risk governance.

CapHaz-Net wants to overcome the present fragmentation of these research approaches and related practices and to come to an integrative perspective. Therefore, the specific objectives are to:

• Develop a comprehensive and systematic overview of the current state-of-the-art of knowledge in the main fields of social-science research on natural hazards,
• Identify current gaps in the knowledge base as well as issues requiring multi- and interdisciplinary research,
• Evaluate the contributions and relevance of the above outlined themes for the creation of more resilient societies and communities by identifying and assessing existing practices and policies at different spatial scales across Europe,
• Develop and apply a conceptual frame for institutional learning and transfer of existing knowledge and best practice into action. Therefore stakeholders and policy-makers are included in the main activities of CapHaz-Net to enhance and foster communication between the scientific community, practitioners and policy-makers,
• Provide guidance and recommendations for further research and to improve future policy and practice in the field of natural hazards.

Consortium Institutes:

• Helmholtz-Zentrum für Umweltforschung – UFZ, Leipzig (Deutschland) 

• Flood Hazard Research Centre (FHRC), Middlesex University, London (Großbritannien)
• 
Mass Emergencies Programme (PEM), Istituto di Sociologia Internazionale di Gorizia (Italien)
• Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Spanien)
• Anton Melik Geographical Institute, Znanstvenoraziskovalni center Slovenske akademije znanosti in umetnosti, Ljubljana (Slowenien)
• Eidgenössische Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL), Birmensdorf und Davos (Schweiz)
• DIALOGIK Gemeinnützige Gesellschaft für Kommunikation und Kooperationsforschung, Stuttgart (Deutschland)
• Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University (Großbritannien)

WSL team:

Matthias Buchecker (project leader)
Corina Höppner (project collaborator)
Michael Bründl

Contact:

• Matthias Buchecker