Assessing health risk using regional mappings based on local perceptions: A comparative study of three different hazards

ABSTRACT

Usually risk assessment falls within the competence of “hard sciences” through environmental and epidemiological measurements, evaluations, and modeling. Even if these approaches bring accurate assessment and evaluation of environmental processes, the perception of local inhabitants is often excluded or at least relegated to second place. Evaluation of human vulnerabilities and capacities to face such hazards requires us to understand the perceptions of the population exposed. Three case studies (Lao, Tunisia, and Ecuador) are presented where we applied a perception-based regional mapping, a mapping tool based on local perceptions, for assessing the connection between land uses and health issues. A selection of the results collected on these three study areas show that the perception of local inhabitants provides a good spatial representation of the different contaminations observed locally, with a good consistency with external data. It also indicates for a certain number of cases that the contamination extends far beyond the simulated radius and impacts peripheral areas. Beyond the analysis of such a method (methodological bias, spatial representation bias, etc.), the objective is to combine our results with epidemiological measurement.

KEYWORDS:

• risk assessment
• perception-based regional mapping
• local inhabitant
• methodological bias

Funding

This research has been assessed thanks to several funding sources (project PEPS MIASMES in Laos, the SICMED network in Tunisia, and the PEPS and ANR MONOIL in Ecuador). The related field missions were possible only with the scientific and logistic support of the French Institute of Research for Development (IRD).