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In this Letter to the Editor the authors refer to the 2019 floods that inundated twenty-five provinces of Iran, and how people perceived their risk. The researchers say that there were numerous examples of the people’s low-risk perception. In Shiraz, the streets were flooded in the morning while the police had severely warned the residents and the travelers in advance. However, people ignored the police warnings and entered the risk zone.

The following suggestions are provided for improving disaster risk perception:

• Improving the disaster risk perception by planning in different areas, including education, research, health, and culture, with an emphasis on the social groups, especially families.
• Launching national and international campaigns to raise public awareness about the risk of disasters and providing training to promote the disaster prevention culture, increase national resilience and citizens’accountability, increase the public’s understanding and perception of risks, and mutually support the spread of the disaster risk knowledge and experience.
• Encouraging the public and private sectors to actively participate in these campaigns on the local, national, and international levels.
• Valuing the role of risk communications in the management of emergencies and disasters and modifying the effective risk communication methods by establishing trust, giving early warnings, ensuring transparency, respecting public concerns and worries, and planning for the existing or expected problems.
• Increasing the availability of knowledge and technologies and developing them by carrying out fundamental and applied research to improve the risk perception and manage the risk of emergencies and disasters more effectively.