Barriers against data sharing for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) at borders

Abstract

Data sharing is a major driver to disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), which is essential to cross-border regions’ resilience. However, sharing data for DRR at borders remains challenging and a limited spectrum of regions have been significantly progressing on this path. While the literature recommends that cross-border regions and organizations settle data ecosystems, studies also evidence that ecosystems face difficulties in developing sustainable rules for data sharing. A better understanding of the impediments of data sharing in cross-border DRR ecosystems is therefore necessary and remains missing in the literature. This research, based on a qualitative and collaborative design, is a work in progress focusing on the Italian-French border. Based on 24 qualitative interviews and archive analysis, we have identified four major challenges that organizations need to overcome to support data sharing for DRR at borders. First, cross-border DRR actors struggle harmonizing their perspectives over their common environment, whether it is environmental or data-related. Second, they face persistent elements of fragmentation, particularly reinforced at frontiers. Third, these organizations meet the challenge of building a sustainable bond of trust between one another about data. Fourth, they lack data maturity, thus impeding good use of data within the ecosystem. Our findings contribute to a more situated understanding of data sharing at borders and call for more consideration of the border settings from practitioners that participate in data sharing.