Italy is a high-risk country, are the Italians prepared? Are they feeling in danger?
Structural engineers, disaster managers, local authorities are not the only actors involved in risk prevention and mitigation.
The first actors are people living at risk.
Very often prevention is planned only at operating level with booklets and practical trainings about how to behave in case of earthquakes, without considering how people conceive the problem.
According to psychological studies, the people’s perception of risk is very different from the real risk. Perception is the starting point to reach critical consciousness, risk acceptance and vulnerability reduction. That is why there is the need for a risk communication project that starts from the individuals perception.
The study proposes a tool to build a sight of seismic risk perception both theoretical and applicative to local areas, subject to a prevention project. A support decision-making to convey complex information, like perception, to the stakeholders involved in mitigation process.
The visualization enables to have an integrated approach of qualitative and quantitative variables influencing perception, to build a description of the phenomenon as complete as possible; and put side by side the seismic risk map and perceived risk map.