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Promoting public skills for safety around the world

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Wändi Bruine de Bruin and Researchers from the University of Southern California will work closely with inter-governmental and NGO partners including the UN Foundation and World Bank to inform international development programmes and improve people’s risk understanding, disaster preparedness and resilience.

£2 million £2 million

total investment by Lloyd's Register Foundation in 2023 into projects to put the World Risk Poll into action.

Find out more about the project

Wändi Bruine de Bruin talks about promoting public skills for safety around the world.

What problem is your project aiming to address?

Worldwide, people’s safety is threatened by climate change, diseases, and disasters. Surveys ask people whether they feel ready for these threats. Insights from these surveys can inform efforts to keep people safe. But those surveys have mostly been done in high-income countries, such as the UK and the USA. People in low-income countries are much more at risk from climate change, diseases and disasters. But little is known about whether people in low-income countries feel they are ready for these threats.

How are you going to go about this?

We will work with global organisations that aim to keep people safe. We have already teamed up with the World Bank, Save the Children, the United Nations Foundation, and Water Keeper Alliance. We will analyse the World Risk Poll to help these organizations find out about public readiness for climate change, diseases and disasters. Our findings will lead to better programmes for keeping people safe.

Who will this make safer, and how?

Our work will help people who are at risk from climate change, diseases, and disasters. Our findings will help global organisations to improve their programmes, which are targeted at vulnerable populations around the world.

How does the World Risk Poll data enable this project and what can you do with it that you couldn't otherwise?

Most surveys about public skills for safety have been done in high-income countries such as the UK and the USA. The World Risk Poll covers 121 countries, including the world’s most vulnerable countries. This means that we now have the data we need to find out whether people in those countries feel ready for climate change, diseases and disasters – and what can be done to help.

Who do you want to talk to, to enhance the impact of this project?

We are most keen to talk to international organisations. But we are happy to talk to anyone who wants to learn more about the World Risk Poll. We also give seminars about how to improve public readiness for climate change, diseases, and disasters.

To find out more about this project, get in touch with the project team at [email protected].

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