MEJOR Technologies Supports VU Amsterdam’s Dream Team Burning Lowlands Research

Hanna Wellenberg
May 14
1 min read

Updated: Jun 2

VU Dream Team Burning Lowlands - MEJOR Technologies — From VU Amsterdam's the Dream Team Burning Lowlands, pictured from left to right — back row: Christoph Geib, Alyson Ranucci, Paul Kandathil Parambil, Milica Mijailović; front row: Futaba Tamura, Eva Koppen, Bettina Nardelli

MEJOR Technologies recently supported a research initiative by the “Dream Team Burning Lowlands” from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, providing wildfire risk maps to explore how technology can influence public understanding of wildfire threats, right here in the Netherlands.

Wildfire Communication

With climate change pushing wildfire risks into new territory, including the densely forested Veluwe region, this study set out to understand how different formats of risk communication impact public perception. The team conducted a survey experiment with 160 participants who had previously visited Veluwe, comparing how people responded to four different types of wildfire risk messages, ranging from simple maps to AI-labelled visualisations.

MEJOR Technologies contributed the wildfire risk maps used in the experiment, which helped simulate real-world communication scenarios.

Key Findings:

AI labelling reduced perceived severity of wildfire risk, suggesting that disclosing the use of AI might unintentionally downplay the urgency of the message.
Maps explained with plain text (but no AI label) generated the highest perception of severity, suggesting that clarity matters more than tech jargon.
Perceived likelihood of wildfire was not significantly influenced by either the AI label or the type of map.
Interestingly, trust in AI or fear of AI did not alter how people interpreted the risks.