Disaster Risk

This report presents results, analysis and findings from INFORM Climate Change, which provides quantified estimates of the impacts of climate change on the future risk of humanitarian crises and disasters. It addresses a major gap in climate and disaster risk research, which until now has predominantly based such risk forecasts on historical data that do not take into account future projections of climate related impacts and socio-economic development.

This report presents results, analysis and findings from INFORM Climate Change, which provides quantified estimates of the impacts of climate change on the future risk of humanitarian crises and disasters. It addresses a major gap in climate and disaster risk research, which until now has predominantly based such risk forecasts on historical data that do not take into account future projections of climate related impacts and socio-economic development.
INFORM Climate Change uses a new approach for understanding the impact of climate change on crisis and disaster risk. It incorporates climate hazard/exposure and socio-economic projections into the framework of the widely used INFORM Risk Index, which measures the risk of humanitarian crises that could result in a need for international assistance. The result is a projection of how crisis risk will change in the future.
The results are intended to inform policy choices across climate mitigation, climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction, sustainable development and humanitarian assistance.

More details and download here

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Save the Date: 6-8 December 2022, Berlin and online

Lessons from anticipatory action: are we getting it right? This year will be the 10th Global Dialogue Platform on Anticipatory Humanitarian Action, which will take place from 6-8 December 2022 in Berlin, Germany, and online. Over three days, participants will look back at what we have learned so far and debate where we need to go next. You can read the full concept note for the 10th Global Dialogue Platform here. This year’s Global Dialogue Platform is being organized in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the World Food Programme, the Start Network and United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, with support from the German Federal Foreign Office. Further information about participation, registration and the agenda will be shared soon.

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The Understanding Risk Global Forum (UR22) will be a hybrid event with the main location in Florianopolis, Brazil (in person for 500-700 people), plus smaller “satellite hubs” in other continents and a virtual participation option for all. The location offers an exceptional opportunity for the world to learn from Brazil and vice versa and strengthen the sustainable development agenda, moving from understanding risk to action on disaster resilience.

Join us from 28 November to 2 December 2022 to discuss the latest research, innovative projects, and emerging ideas in disaster risk management. The UR platform and events provide a fun and creative environment for academics, policymakers, private sector, community organizations, and development partners to share knowledge and foster non-traditional interactions and partnerships. 

Registration is open.

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Belfast on 9/10th November 2022. The conference theme is "Wildfires - The Human Dimension”. This event brings together various agencies who work on this topic, with delegates and speakers ranging from professional firefighters, land managers, academics, researchers and government officials. Although a national conference, it will have speakers from around the world, ensuring we learn from what is happening elsewhere in terms of wildfires and their human impact and consequences.  The event is being organised by the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and NI Fire & Rescue Service in partnership with the International Association of Wildland Fire (IAWF).

You can book your place and find out more information via the Conference website: https://www.ukwildfireconference2022.org 

In November 2022 (5-18), Egypt will host the 27th Conference of the Parties of the UNFCCC (COP27) in Sharm El-Sheikh, with a view to building on previous successes and paving the way for future ambition.

Event website for engaging and registering.

Covid, Conflict as well as the the Climate and Environmental Crisis are high on both – international and national - Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) agendas. More than ever, the benefit of increasing investment in DRR and Disaster Preparedness becomes tangible for everyone. Crisis are becoming increasingly complex which means that crisis preparedness and management also increases in complexity. But are we prepared for the challenges ahead? What kind of transformation is needed to unlock DRR options in dealing with complexity of today’s crisis?

Expect exciting discussions and exchanges with international and national experts at this year's German Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction. If possible, the conference will be partly held in-person in addition to virtual sessions.

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The joint webinar co-organized by the WHO Regional Office for Europe and the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) will take place on Tuesday, 4 October 2022, from 09:30 to 11:00 hrs (CEST). 

Urban and spatial planning needs to increasingly consider preparedness and resilience as a determinant of public health at the local level. Climate change, inadequate urbanization patterns and environmental degradation have left many cities vulnerable to disasters such as extreme weather events, chemical accidents, floods, earthquakes, power cuts, pandemics, or forest fires.
Much can be done at the city level by local authorities, planners and managers to apply urban planning and design as an instrument to reduce risks and vulnerabilities and build resilience. This webinar aims to reflect on the different dimensions of local preparedness and resilience, and discusses the experiences and potential actions that can be taken by national and local governments to establish and support preparedness and resilience at local scale.

The webinar is addressed to
1.  National Coordinators and Focal Points of UfM,
2.  Practitioners and decision-makers in urban resilience and development and in environment and health
3.  Networks and public authorities dealing with urban sustainability and resilience at national, regional and local levels, and
4.  Academics, Civil Society Organizations, and other interested stakeholders.

Participants are kindly requested to confirm their participation in the meeting by registering online, as soon as possible, at the following link: https://ufmsecretariat.org/form-ufm-who-regional-office-for-europe-webinar/

Working languages will be English, French and Arabic.

DG HOME is organising this workshop to bring together law enforcement practitioners, local authorities, infrastructure operators, policy makers and researchers to discuss the lessons drawn from FCT and INFRA projects, reach recommendations, and determine their most effective implementation strategies in the future research and innovation activities.

27 September 2022, 10:00 CEST - 28 September 2022, 17:00 CEST

To see the agenda and to register, please follow this link

The 2022 Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) implementation workshop and training will be in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The workshop is on 19-20 September 2022 at the KIT Royal Tropical Institute, and the training is on 21 September at De Duif. The co-hosts for both events are Everbridge and Alert-hub.Org CIC.

You can register via this link. For those who cannot participate in person, webinar call-in instructions will be sent to everyone registered. Documents pertaining to the workshop and training are posted to the workshop website.

Everyone interested in emergency alerting is welcome: managers, technical staff, media, etc., including government, non-governmental organizations and commercial firms. There is no charge to participate.

You can find more details in the workshop flyer here. 

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Geneva, Switzerland, 6 July 2022 – The Government of Fiji held its last Steering Group meeting as Chair of the Platform on Disaster Displacement (PDD) and officially handed over the baton of leadership of the PDD to the European Union (EU) to chair until December 2023.

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The CORE Consortium is happy to invite you to join its Webinar #2 on Designing an inclusive resilience: The full consideration of vulnerability before, during and after disasters, to be held next October 3, 2022, from 13h00 to 16h15 CET.

You can already register here, considering some possible slight modifications in the agenda (here in below) until then.

You can follow our LinkedIn and Twitter channels to stay tuned: the promotion of our speakers and presentation is imminent!

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AGENDA (Version 19.09.2022)
 
- 13H-13H05: Introduction, by Marie-Christine BONNAMOUR (General Secretary of PSCE  & CORE D&C Manager)
 
- 13H05-13H20: What EU policies for vulnerables groups?, by Anna BATTISTUTA (Policy Officer at EC for civil protection policy development (DG ECHO – Directorate B))
 
- 13H20-13H35:  The need to define better vulnerability, by Giampiero GRIFFO (Contributor to UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (EFD Italy))
 
- 13H35-13H50: Increasing the resilience of the Deaf Community in NSW to natural hazards, by Leyla CRAIG (Disability Inclusion and Engagement Officer, Fire and Rescue NSW (Australia))
 
- 13H50-14H05: DRM Operational perspectives with  Down syndrome, by Arch. Stefano ZANUT (National Fire Services (Italy))
 
- 14H05-14H20: Applying an intersectional lens to vulnerability reduction, by Alexandros Tsakiridis (PreventionWeb (UNDRR) Editor)
 
- 14H20-14H35: Egressibility: a paradigm shift for an inclusive building design, by  Enrico RONCHI, (Senior Lecturer, Department of Fire Safety Engineering, Lund University, Svezia) 
 
- 14H35-14H50:  Inclusive community engagement in DRM, by Dr. Sofia KARMA (Laboratory Teaching Staff of NTUA (Athens)) 

 
- 14H50-15H05: Gender equality in DRR , by Prof. Dilanthi AMARATUNGA (Head of Global Disaster Resilience Centre (HuD)) [TBC]
 
- 15H05-15H20: DRR / EU / Rights of PwDs, by Nadia HADAD (Board Member of European Disability Forum (EFD)) 

- 15H20-15H35: Vulnerability in CBRNe context, by Sr. Grigore HAVARNEANU (Coordinator of PROACTIVE Project)
 
- 15H35-16H00: Questions & Answers / Discussion time

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A hybrid event co-hosted with the French Ministry of Interior and jointly organized with DG ECHO in Paris. This 2-day event (22-23 November) aims to share the achievements of the Union Civil Protection Knowledge Network (UCPKN) Science Pillar in addressing challenges such as compound, concurrent and cascade events which need to be included in risk analysis or the communication challenges in risk management, among others. Further details, including the session’s description and logistics details, are available in the dedicated webpage of DRMKC website.

Join us in looking into needs and gaps but also into solutions and implementations of good practices. We will share the status of the initiatives being designed/implemented in the Commission to support some of the current challenges in disaster risk management. We will collect partecipants' feedbacks and ideas to draft an action plan for the Science Pillar for the next 2 years (2023-2024)!

Following the Risk Data Hub Workshop and the Civil Protection Forum in June 2022, the Risk Data Hub team has been expanding the features and refining functionalities of the platform based on the feedback received from users and stakeholders. To further support the EU Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change, we have released the Risk Data Hub Users’ Corner Guide. The report provides extensive guidance to external users on using the DRMKC RDH reporting and analysis capabilities, and how to access our curated data collection and create personalised workspaces. The team also created the Facts and Figures section which allows users to explore our data collection dynamically and to use of interactive dashboards and storymaps to derive insights from a catalogue of DRM data. Stay tuned for new features and storymaps that will soon be published.
The new product INFORM Climate Change Risk will be available soon.

Don’t wait to check the latest risk, trends and country risk profiles on our website https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index.

DRMKC was proud to share the release of the new INFORM Risk Index 2023 which has different trend analyses dashboards, one for facts & figures and another one for country profiles (see image).

The new product INFORM Climate Change Risk will be available soon.

"The Local Tsunamis Early Warning Systems workshop (hybrid, in Ispra - Italy) is approaching fast! We will be co-hosting it in early October together with UNESCO-IOC. This event will focused on last-mile prevention and will gather volcano, earthquake and tsunamis experts to discuss the state-of-the-art and improvement pathways. If you’re interested, the registrations are still open!

The Disaster and Emergency Management course at Coventry University will host a series of 6 online training seminars between September and November focused on spreading evidence-based knowledge about disaster risk management. Speakers from DG JRC, DG ECHO, and the Cooperation Network of Risk, Safety and Security Studies (CONRIS) network universities will share their knowledge and experience.

The detailed programme is available in the learning corner page of the DRMKC website. Participants will receive a certificate of attendance if they join 4 or more seminars.

Students from CONRIS partner universities and staff involved in risk management and civil protection are welcome to join. Link for registering to the event: https://www.eventsforce.net/drmonlinetraining2022

A recent global study conducted by the Joint Research Centre looks at the difference between surface temperatures of urban areas and their neighbouring rural areas in summer.
 
Abstract: Surface temperatures are generally higher in cities than in rural surroundings. This phenomenon, known as surface urban heat island (SUHI), increases the risk of heat-related human illnesses and mortality. Past global studies analysed this phenomenon aggregated at city scale or over seasonal and annual time periods, while human impacts strongly depend on shorter term heat stress experienced locally. Here we develop a global long-term high-resolution dataset of daytime SUHI as urban-rural surface temperature differences. Our results show that across urban areas worldwide over the period 2003-2020, 3-day SUHI extremes are on average more than twice as high as the warm-season median SUHI, with local exceedances up to 10 K. Over this period, SUHI extremes have increased more rapidly than warm-season medians, and averaged worldwide are now 1.04 K or 31% higher compared to 2003. This can be linked with increasing urbanisation, more frequent heatwaves, and greening of the earth, processes that are all expected to continue in the coming decades. Within many cities there are hotspots where extreme SUHI intensity is 10 to 15 K higher compared to relatively cooler city parts. Given the limited human adaptability to heat stress, our results advocate for mitigation strategies targeted at reducing SUHI extremes in the most vulnerable and exposed city neighbourhoods.

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🌍 Dear Reader, please find the CORE (sCience & human factOr for Resilient sociEty) Newsletter #2 (July 2022) to share with you the latest news on the project, not forgetting EU news, a focus on partners' activities, and a highlight on our sister projects: for a resilient society.

📗 "The devastating effects of recent natural and man-made phenomena highlighted the gaps in disaster preparedness in European society, and the importance of increasing risk awareness and community resilience.
Populations readiness and the ability to apply optimal procedures during an emergency, including the most vulnerable groups, would undoubtedly make societies more resilient".

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👉 CORE NEWSLETTER #2 👈
💡 Don't forget to subscribe to our future Newsletters, by clicking here 💡

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The JRC Annual Awards for Excellence are given for outstanding work carried out at the JRC in line with its mission, vision and values. The awards are given following a JRC-wide call procedure and internal evaluation. 

The 2022 edition received 67 nominations across 7 categories and 13 awards were given in the categories:

Category 1: Excellence in Science for Policy

Category 2: Excellence in Knowledge Management

Category 3: Excellence in Research

Category 4: Young Scientist Award

Category 5: Innovation and/or Technical Development

Category 6: Excellence in Administration

Category 7: Best Team Collaboration

Thu 16th and Fri 17th of June

The kick-off meeting for the Network of Drought Observatories in the EU will provide an overview of the state-of-the-art of Drought Observatories in the EU, both from a scientific/technical and from an operational point of view (Thu 16 June). Short and medium-term challenges, and needs for development will then be identified and discussed, laying out the scope and roadmap for the network (Fri 17 June). The event will offer an opportunity to engage and connect with drought experts across the EU, as well as to participate to the information gathering effort within the EDORA project.

Hybrid Event in presence at JRC (Ispra, IT) and on-line.  Meeting agenda

Registrations now closed. If you are a speaker and did not managed to register, or someone interested in attending the event from remote, you can still contact us directly at functional mailbox JRC-EDORA @ European Commission domain.

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