Innovative pathways towards more resilient communities: evidence from a safety culture study in Italy

Introduction Safety culture is a specific aspect of a community’s overall culture, which influences how risks are approached and adverse events are managed within a community. Understanding and building insights on safety culture at community level is key to community resilience in face to risks and disasters. The concept of safety culture was defined shortly after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident in 1986 and, since then, safety culture concept and activities are widely applied in many safety-critical sectors, with each sector developing specific declinations of the concept and its own tools for analyzing and improving safety culture. Methods This work presents the implementation of a safety culture measurement campaign in Italy based on an original methodology for the comparative analysis of safety culture among five European countries, encompassing two Italian regions (Veneto and Campania). The methodology has been operationalized in a three steps toolkit for qualitative and quantitative data collection, with all phases addressing and comparing three categories of stakeholders: citizens, public organizations directly involved in Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and other public institutions indirectly involved in DRM. The Italian study involved 1,111 respondents to the survey, 21 interviewed and 41 participants in the focus groups. Results The study highlighted strength and weaknesses at overall country level, at regional one and across the targeted groups. Based on these, the key areas for improvement have been identified, and a set of actions tailored to address the specific weaknesses of safety culture pattern of each target groups have been defined, with each action specifically identified to sustain one or more of the codified elements and dimensions of the safety culture according to the above methodology. Discussion The proposed methodology and its toolkit have proven their relevance and actionability for Civil Protection activities, as they can support the understanding of the impact of investments in risk information and communication activities, allow to focus improvement initiatives through more targeted actions and reduce biases in interpreting the dynamics of cooperation and understanding between citizens, Civil Protection services, and other institutions.