WP2 learns from local communities’ understandings of public policies and adaptation to strategies for risk mitigation in the built environment. Combining the insights of urban studies and science and health communication, WP2 reflects on current pathways for disease mitigation in residential neighbourhoods, with four objectives:

• Analyze how public policies of disease mitigation and control by state agencies engage with the residential environment, and assess the public communication strategies of those policies amongst resident communities;
• Examine how public policies, private stakeholders’ strategies, communities’ collective practices and households’ behaviours contribute to the daily maintenance and transformation of the built environment, from home to neighbourhood;
• Assess how the perception of risk associated with infectious diseases engenders behaviours that deal with, and introduce alternative management, but also transform the built environment, in response to governmental disease prevention and communication strategies;
• Generate small-scale quantitative data to refine the epidemic prediction model; provide policy recommendations and messaging strategies for dynamic management of risk factors in the neighbourhoods.

WP2 uses a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods to gauge if – and to what extent – the physical and spatial characteristics of residential environments, as well as public perceptions, determine different degrees of risk vis-à-vis infectious disease propagation.