Disaster Risk Assessment
According to Priority Action 2 of the Hyogo Framework for Action – “Identify, assess and monitor disaster risks and enhance early warning” – the starting point for reducing disaster risk and for promoting a culture of disaster resilience lies in the knowledge of the hazards and of the physical, social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities to disasters that most societies face.
According to the European Commission, risk assessments underpin the planning of investments to address immediate and critical risks; therefore to enable the development of policies and strategies for disaster risk management, it is crucial to improve risk knowledge and evidence base as well as access to data.
In 2010, the European Commission issued Risk Assessment and Mapping Guidelines for Disaster Management to support Member States in preparing national assessments. The main purpose of these guidelines was to improve coherence and consistency among the risk assessments undertaken in the Member States at national level in the prevention, preparedness and planning stages and to make these risk assessments more comparable between Member States.
The guidelines say, “when carried out at national level, disaster risk assessments and risk management can become essential inputs for planning and policies in a number of areas of public and private activity. By improving the awareness and understanding of the risks a Member State faces, decision makers, stakeholders and interested parties are in a better position to agree on the preventive measures to take and to prepare in ways to avoid the most severe consequences of natural and man-made hazards and of other adverse events”.
In this framework, PPRD East 2 is:
- actively promoting the EU approach to disaster risk assessment indicated in the Commission Guidelines, and
- further developing and expanding the PPRD East Electronic Regional Risk Atlas, supporting interested Partner Countries in the design and implementation of a system for collecting and processing disaster loss data according to the JRC recommendations for a European approach to recording disaster losses of 2013.
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