INEG RISK, Natural risk, Economic inequalities and prevention behaviours.

Photo : A car stuck in the mud, Faride.boureima, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

The LAPSCO and the CERDI conduct a multidisciplinary research project on economic inequalities and behaviours, INEG RISK.

The two research centres will combine their expertise on behaviour studies for the LAPSCO and poverty for the CERDI to study how income distribution impacts how populations prepare for natural disasters and their ability to rebuild their life afterwards.

The International Research Centre of Disaster Science and Sustainable Development (CIR-4), a research program of the UCA and the I-Site Label CAP 20-26, funds this research. The LAPSCO and the CERDI are Joint research units (UMR) associated with the CNRS and the Université Clermont Auvergne. The CERDI is affiliated with the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development.

L'Equipe

Objectives of the project

This research program focuses on the relationship between social inequalities and the vulnerability of the population to natural disasters. Previous works showed how natural disasters and their long-term effects impact the population living in precarious conditions or exposed to poor conditions more severely. The team wants to analyze the role of economic inequality on risk perception. Also, they will study how individuals respond to risk awareness and preventive measures at the local and national levels.

The team will explore how inequalities affect the population's trust in risk management institutions and their compliance with prevention procedures. More specifically, they will confirm if the level of preparedness and resilience to natural disasters is determined by various factors such as income distribution, i.e. inequalities and polarization. They will examine the economic and psychological aspects that affect the social dynamic. They want to see if individuals will react in a concerted and organized way to protect themselves from disaster and also to go on and rebuild their lives after the cataclysm.

Finally, the team will define a precise diagnostic between social inequalities and vulnerabilities. They will also suggest ideas or perspectives to design and implement better public policies.

The partners

During the exploratory phase, the team will analyze the contents of large international databases. They will analyze the data on risk and disasters from the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, The Lloyd's Register Foundation World Risk Poll, and economic data from the World Bank. They will use statistical analytics techniques applied to large datasets and machine learning to analyze these datasets.

Next, they will use the practices and techniques more commonly used in social psychology and economics to define digital simulations to separate each factor and quantify its impacts. They will build models based on the individual's criteria like income and economic behaviours. Economic inequalities, trust and compliance with institutions will also be added to the simulated profiles to take into account the impact of feelings and emotions on individual and collective attitudes. These simulations of social interactions between individuals and groups will help the team observe and build new social models.