GLOMOS at Risk SOS: Advancing understanding of risk perception in mountains

GLOMOS at Risk SOS: Bringing Behaviour into Risk Science

GLOMOS expert Dr. Paola Fontanella Pisa participated in the Risk SOS workshop (ECRP26), held from 8–10 June 2026 and hosted by the CMCC Foundation (Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change) at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, where she presented her work on risk perception as a cultural process, drawing on insights from Tadami Biosphere Reserve, Japan.

The workshop addressed contemporary approaches to integrate understandings on how people actually understand risk and respond to it into disaster risk and adaptation studies.This workshop brought together work on behavioural dynamics, risk perception and systemic modelling,highlighting the need to explicitly account for “response” as a core component of risk.

Risk is never only biophysical. It is shaped by local knowledge, cultural practices, past experiences, biases and everyday decision-making, which influence whether and how communities prepare for, respond to and recover from hazards. Ignoring these dimensions leads to partial assessments that fail to reflect how risk actually unfolds on the ground.

These considerations are particularly relevant for mountain social-ecological systems. They are characterised by strong interdependencies between environmental and social processes, which makes them particularly sensitive to cascading effects. This further reinforces the need for approaches that go beyond static assessments and integrate behavioural dynamics into systemic risk frameworks.

In this context, Dr. Paola Fontanella Pisa’s contribution adds empirical evidence to ongoing discussions on how risk perception is culturally embedded and how this shapes adaptation processes. By grounding these insights in case study research, her work contributes to bridging the gap between theoretical developments and real-world applications.

Strengthening the integration of behavioural and cultural dimensions into risk science remains a key step for improving disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation strategies. As highlighted throughout the workshop, understanding how people perceive risk, make decisions and act is not an add-on, but an essential element for building more effective and realistic approaches to resilience.