Study of end-user needs regarding behavior change to be more resilient to extreme weather events

Extreme weather events are increasing and will follow this trend due to climate change. In this scenario, adaptation, and mitigation in the face of them becomes essential both through technological innovations and through behavioural changes. In recent years, progress has been made in scientific knowledge on extreme hydrometeorological phenomena and climate change, and more funding is available for adaptation to climate change, both from European funds (e.g. Next Generation funds), country-level or regional funding. However, there are difficulties for to become this into a change in behaviors and actions to be more resilient to extreme phenomena both at the level of the general population and the public and private sector. This leads us to wonder if the knowledge and tools that are being generated are adjusted to the needs of these audiences in relation to adaptation and what are the facilities and barriers to carry out these changes towards more resilient patterns.

In order to analyze this aspect, a study has been carried out in which the viability and fitting of products and tools to improve the resilience of different type of end-users have been tested. For this, the first step was to conceptualize the tools and define hypotheses associated with them. The next step was to design the interviews to validate these hypotheses. Forty interviews were conducted with representatives of local administration, flood management companies, individuals, and so on. The interviews were customized to suit these different sectors and audiences. The answers served to validate or invalidate the starting hypotheses. In addition to the interviews, sources of expert information were consulted to identify similar strategies or tools and their level of success in their execution.

The interviews have made it possible to identify barriers to the implementation of changes both in individual habits (such as less interest than expected in attending participatory processes), and in organizations: budgetary limitations, political calendar or little knowledge/interest in knowing historical events. Motivations and interests were also identified, such as having a platform with centralized information on extreme phenomena or the prestige of collaborating with the academy to find optimal solutions to this problem.

This research has been done in the framework of the C3-Riskmed project (FEDER/MICINN-AEI/ PID2020-113638RB-C22) funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation and EU Horizon 2020 project I-CHANGE (grant agreement 101037193).