Integration of People-centred and Physical Vulnerabilities into Risk Modelling for People-Centred Disaster Risk Reduction

People-centred risk modelling requires the explicit consideration of both people-centred vulnerability and disaster-related personal needs, based on the individual characteristics of a population. This type of modelling can be used to characterize risk in terms that facilitate targeted, equitable decision-making on interventions for reducing the impacts associated with extreme natural events. For instance, it can be used to guide the implementation of back-up power supply at locations where people rely on electrically powered life-sustaining equipment in their homes or structural measures to protect low-income residential buildings of people who cannot use savings to cover disaster losses. Several bottlenecks prevent these types of models from being easily applied in practice: (1) their data-intensive nature, as they require rich information on the population of interest; and (2) (closely related to 1), their high level of context specificity, given that relevant personal needs and people-centred vulnerability characteristics are inherently localized. Here, we discuss actionable measures to overcome these challenges, relaying our experience of applying a people-centred risk model to hazard-prone, socially vulnerable areas of cities in Europe. The first step of our model application procedure comprises a participatory process with relevant actors, who provide necessary social context and identify the local needs of interest related to natural hazard events. The outputs of this process are then used to guide the collection of appropriate (physical and people-centred) exposure and vulnerability data for risk modelling, and to develop suitable risk metrics that are then disaggregated on the basis of important population characteristics as part of the risk calculations. We demonstrate how this type of practical, people-centred risk modelling approach can be used to provide decision-makers with suitable quantitative evidence to support the implementation of equitable, cost-effective risk reduction measures.