Science for disaster risk management 2017: knowing better and losing less

The Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction is the leading global forum for strategic advice, coordination, partnership development and the review of progress in the implementation of international instruments on disaster risk reduction. Established in 2006 and is now the world’s foremost gathering of stakeholders committed to reducing disaster risk and building the resilience of communities and nations.

Today the global and national work is built on the UN Sendai Framework for disaster risk reduction (2015).

The Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre under the European Commission has produced first flagship science report "Science for disaster risk management 2017: knowing better and losing less".

The report was for the first time publicly presented at Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Cancun, Mexico last week (22-26 May), with the aim to translate the wealth of available science into language understandable for stakeholders such as policy makers, practitioners and scientists from other disciplines.

Some of the issues discussed at the global meeting and in the report are:

• How can governments and stakeholders best work together to strengthen economic and social resilience through improved risk governance?
• What has worked in risk governance, and what has not?
• How can countries benefit from each other’s experiences through peer learning?
• How can insurance contribute to better manage risks

This report is the result of the multi-sectorial and multi-disciplinary networking process and represents the combined effort of more than two hundred, mostly European, experts. It will support the integration of science into informed decision making through synthesizing and translating evidence for disaster risk management and strengthening the science-policy and science-operation interface.

It shows a holistic understanding of both, disaster risk addressing  hazards, exposure and vulnerability as well as  disaster risk management focusing on all four phases of disaster cycle through a systematic multi-hazard assessment overview of existing disaster risk knowledge.

The report highlights the further need of  new research avenues to  address the multi-risk impacts of natural and human-induced hazards  as well as  the cascading effects of those hazards in order to integrate this information into overall assessment.

Mia Ebeltoft at Finance Norway has been one of the expert participating in the report on how the insurance can contribute to manage disaster risk (chapter 5).

You will find the executive summary and entire document here.