The near-miss effect in flood risk estimation: Integrating psychological variables into agent-based models

Risk-estimation models for urban areas generally fail to consider the psychological factors that affect human response to risk. The present contribution aims to integrate key psychological factors in models assessing the potential economic consequences of flood-related events. Specifically, the work focused on the resilient near-miss effect, the human tendency to underestimate the risks when a previous negative outcome is avoided by chance. Study 1 (N = 241) investigated the resilient near-miss effect among residents of both flood-prone and safe areas, showing that participants exposed to near-miss scenarios perceived a lower level of risk and damages regardless of their past experience with the hazard and were thus less prone to adopt protective measures. Based on the data collected in Study 1, Study 2 developed a series of agent-based models to simulate the effect of experiencing near-miss events on a neighborhood in a flood-prone area, where inhabitants have to decide whether to purchase insurance against flood-related damage. The agent-based models integrating the psychological parameters revealed that the underestimation of the likelihood of flooding due to the near-miss effect is likely to increase the negative economic consequences of natural disasters suffered by the population. Integration of psychological variables might be a promising way to increase the accuracy of risk estimation models, especially when relying on data collected from the population of interest.