About Understanding Risk
Vision
The vision of Understanding Risk (UR) is to increase the global understanding of risk by supporting a network of experts and practitioners that share knowledge and experience, collaborate and discuss innovation and best practice in disaster risk assessment.
Background
The 2010 UR Forum seeded a vibrant global community of experts and practitioners in disaster risk assessment. 500 participants attended the Forum, held in Washington D.C, June 1-3, 2010, and over 2,000 members, representing over 100 countries joined the UR Online Community. The UR site was created prior to the Forum to enable participants to exchanges ideas on the various session topics leading up to, and following the conference. UR members range from representatives of government agencies, multilateral organizations, non-governmental organizations, and research institutions, to the private sector and community-based organizations.
The UR Online Community
The objective of UR Online Community site is to provide a permanent space where the community can share ideas and collaborate. Currently the site is being developed to transform it from a platform that supported a conference, to a vibrant 365 day a year community. Incentives, such as allowing members to showcase risk assessment projects and map those projects, are being built into the site to encourage participation and further engagement.
The UR 2012 Forum
The “State-of-the-Union” of the UR Community is the UR Forum, which is held every two years. The next UR Forum will take place in South Africa in 2012. The theme will be “Mapping our Global Risk.” A spatial understanding of vulnerability is central to understanding risk and making informed decisions to reduce that risk. The Forum will therefore be strategically linked to the World Bank’s Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI), an initiative that seeks to operationalize the first recommendation of the flagship report “Natural Hazards: Unnatural Disasters, the Economics of Effective Prevention:” that sharing risk data is central to effective disaster risk reduction.