Strategic Foresight in Disaster Risk Management: Practices across Europe

Strategic foresight as a structured tool for exploring plausible futures can help to better anticipate and prepare for change as well as to make sense of uncertainties (OECD, n.d.; Cutter, 2013). However, strategic foresight has not been implemented to its full potential in the field of disaster risk management as the conceptualisation of disaster risk is often probabilistic and past-oriented (Riddell et al., 2020).

The aim of our study is to create a more comprehensive understanding of the uses of strategic foresight by exploring the existing practices and lessons learned across different European disaster risk management systems. We have done this by conducting semi-structured expert interviews with representatives from different EU member states, holding an international webinar with risk assessment and foresight experts in January 2024, and carrying out desk research on official reports and documents concerning strategic foresight and disaster risk. The interviewees included representatives from Finland, Ireland, Denmark, Luxembourg and Romania who work for either ministries or government agencies responsible for disaster risk management and civil protection.

Our results indicate that the existing practices of using strategic foresight in disaster risk management in European countries often lack a clear methodological foundation as foresight and risk assessment methods are often blended. Amongst the most commonly used methods are scenario-building and horizon scanning. One of the main gaps highlighted by participants is the lack of resources to carry out extensive foresight processes. Interdisciplinarity and cooperation between different governmental as well as non-governmental agencies are seen as factors that support the implementation of foresight. Our study maps the existing foresight practices and provides recommendations for disaster managers going forward. The lessons learned from this study could be beneficial to various institutions responsible for disaster management in Europe and beyond that are planning to implement foresight methods in their work.