Using learning to harness social and organizational culture for disaster risk reduction

This paper, an output of the project EDUCEN: European Disasters in Urban Centres, provides an overview of learning in the context of disaster risk reduction (DRR). It explores when and how learning takes place within and across organisations and people, introduces prominent concepts, approaches and methods for learning, and links existing literature on learning in DRR with EDUCEN’s work with learning across cultures.

Overall, the selection of appropriate methods for organisational and network learning requires careful consideration of a series of internal and external factors to the project and case studies. Furthermore, this brief highlights that there is a need to better integrate different communities of science, practice and policy, and between different sectors; and that effort needs to focus more strongly on the needs and priorities of people at risk. On-the-ground learning needs to better inform decision-making by translating (tacit) knowledge into policy and practice.

SEI Working Paper, No. 2016-10.