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Resilience building of the private sector in small island states

February 14, 2020 2:08 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Resilience building of the private sector in small island states

use · stakeholdercollaboration

The private sector is an important partner in building resilience of any small island developing state.
This panel discussion will explore historical contributions but also identify gaps as per foresight among key partners. This is paramount in order to exhibit 20/20 vision to implement the necessary measures for the resilience with emphasis on the private sector of small island developing states.

Organizer: CARICHAM The Network of Caribbean Chambers of Commerce

Partner organization: United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction


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The #TimesUp moment for disaster risk? Transformational approaches for gender inclusion in DRR

February 14, 2020 1:54 am Published by Leave a comment

  

The #TimesUp moment for disaster risk? Transformational approaches for gender inclusion in DRR

stakeholder-collaboration

The diverse experiences of women and other gender minorities in the context of disasters has long been highlighted in literature and policy frameworks, yet progress in recognizing the vulnerabilities and resilience contributions of these groups remains limited.

This interactive workshop aims to provide a platform for discussion by experts, practitioners, and policy makers in order to highlight gaps, best practices and new ways forward for improved and more effective gender inclusion within the DRR agenda.

Organizer: Ca Foscari University


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Accelerating a shift in urban water resilience: Influencing policy, shaping practice and sharing learning

February 14, 2020 1:49 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Accelerating a shift in urban water resilience: Influencing policy, shaping practice and sharing learning

use · risk assessment · early warning · landslide

The Resilience Shift (RS) (www.resilienceshift.org), supported by Lloyd’s Register Foundation and Arup, is working to make resilience tangible, practical and relevant. Currently focusing on the urban water sector, we are proposing a side event that will consider urban water systems through the lens of resilience. Our work on influencing policy, shaping practice and sharing learning will help to inspire and empower the global urban community on how to make the world safer through resilient infrastructure.

Cities have highlighted a need for tools and approaches to help them and their stakeholders navigate the process of building resilience. RS provides knowledge and tools for those responsible for planning, financing, designing, delivering, operating and maintaining critical infrastructure systems. Our aim is to ensure infrastructure systems are able to withstand, adapt to, and recover quickly from anticipated or unexpected shocks and stresses – now and in the future.

This session will look at our three areas of focus, including:

Influencing policy: Exploring our work with our partners to drive urban water resilience up the global agenda.

Shaping practice: Introducing the City Water Resilience Approach (CWRA), enabling cities to improve their urban water resilience. CWRA is a joint effort developed in collaboration with our project partners, the Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI), along with city partners in Amman, Cape Town, Greater Miami and the Beaches, Mexico City, Kingston upon Hull, Greater Manchester, Rotterdam and Thessaloniki, and with contributions from 100 Resilient Cities and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Tools forming part of this approach including the City Water Resilience Framework and Our Water will be explored.This will include the findings and recommendations of our Potable Water resilience primer that has sought industry perspectives on current industry resilience practice that can drive change.

Sharing learning: sharing lessons learnt from Cape Town’s Day Zero water crisis around city governance, the management of water resilience, the importance of multi-stakeholder response, and the impact of an emergency on consumer behaviour. This is supported by The Cape Town Drought Response Learning Initiative (CTDRLI) who have documented analyses and reflections of key individuals involved in the drought response, through in-depth filmed interviews.

Overall, this event will strengthen the urban water resilience community of practice and accelerate a shift in how we approach resilience. The event will be supplemented by presentation slides and video material.

Organizer: Resilience Shift

Partner Organizations: Arup


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Nature-based solutions at any cost? A role play to support decision-making for flood risk management

February 14, 2020 1:31 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Nature-based solutions at any cost? A role play to support decision-making for flood risk management

use · nature-based solutions · flood

Investments in nature are increasingly considered as solutions to manage flood risk. Yet understanding when and how nature-based solutions can be effective remains challenging.

To help build capacity around nature-based solutions, WWF has recently published the Flood Green Guide (http://envirodm.org/flood-management) and is developing a new role-playing game designed to give stakeholders a sense of the myriad of factors that flood managers need to consider when selecting flood risk management methods.

The role-play illustrates the key factors that influence decisions related to nature-based solutions, including ecological and technological factors, as well as competing interests from different sector stakeholder groups. The activity includes a hypothetical constraint of time pressure, in the form of an externally funded project, to illustrate the practical realities of flood risk management.

The second part of the event will be dedicated to presenting the open-source role-play material and discussing how it could be adapted to other contexts suggested by participants, e.g. youth education, technical staff, etc.

Organizer: Nanyang Technological University

Partner organizations: Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University, WWF (World Wildlife Fund)


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Disaster displacement in a changing climate: Risks and impacts

February 14, 2020 1:25 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Disaster displacement in a changing climate: Risks and impacts

Presentations and interactive discussion

identify · use · Data · risk assessment

The session will feature presentations on new results from a collaboration between IDMC and Facebook in tracking disaster displacement movements and estimating displacement risk in disaster events. It will further discuss progress in applying disaster displacement risk models to planning for risk management in the Asia-Pacific region and offer an opportunity for discussion on the future of disaster displacement risks and impacts.

Organizer: Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre

Partner organizations: Facebook and Platform for Disaster Displacement


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Dynamic cities and disaster risk: Capturing the complexity within risk models

February 14, 2020 1:19 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Dynamic cities and disaster risk: Capturing the complexity within risk models

identify · cities · risk assessment

Urbanisation is occurring rapidly in many places – 43 cities are expected to exceed 10 million people by 2030, with 2.5 billion people added to urban areas by 2050.

Increasing urbanization manifests in
1) expansion of the urban area, resulting in change in land use as undeveloped land is developed, and
2) infill, as open space is developed and building density is increased to raise the density of the city. While these effects are known, we have not adequately and routinely been able to quantify the changes in disaster risk due to urbanisation and incorporate these dynamics into disaster risk management practices.

This event provides interactive exploration of how different components of urban development influence disaster risk. Participants will have the (guided) opportunity to parameterise and run a risk model to explore the influence of factors such as changing building density and urban expansion, their impacts on the local environment and potentially on hazards, as well as the distribution and characteristics of the building stock. Participants will, in turn, experience the impact of these changes on disaster risk.

Participants will gain practical and memorable insight into how risk can be influenced by changes to urban areas, and an understanding of the varying influence of different factors. They will participate in discussion of the influences on future risk, and prospective disaster risk reduction actions. Participants should have a background in the basic concepts of disaster risk and a desire to further explore the factors influencing future urban disaster risk.

Organizer: University of Adelaide

Partner organizations: GFDRR; Nanyang Technical University, ; Research Institute for Knowledge Systems (RIKS); University of Oxford (ECI)


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Innovations in data analysis, geospatial technologies, and related frameworks in risk valuation

February 14, 2020 1:14 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Innovations in data analysis, geospatial technologies, and related frameworks in risk valuation

identify · data · emerging technologies · risk assessment

This session aims to gather institutions, innovators and individuals involved in the study and actual conduct of risk assessments for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. We will tackle and showcase, through demonstrations, existing methods, new ideas and good practices, especially in the use of geospatial information and technologies in promoting data integration, processes and data analyses for accurate and efficient assessment of risks.

Presentations on important catalysts for the promotion, adoption and sustainability of innovations for risk assessment and disaster risk reduction, such as policy frameworks, good governance and data standards and infrastructures may be accepted.

Session presenters are encouraged to produce hard or soft copies of brochures or any material for distribution to other participants. It will be beneficial for all if presenters will relate current studies with the Global Risk Assessment Framework, which the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction is developing. Session participants are in turn requested to provide feedback and comments to improve results of researches and existing technologies or innovations.

Organizer: Department of Science and Technology – Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology (DOST-PHIVOLCS)


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It takes a village: Digital skills to improve urban resilience in Africa

February 14, 2020 1:07 am Published by Leave a comment

  

It takes a village: Digital skills to improve urban resilience in Africa

Workshop

use · data · cities · emerging technologies· youth and young professionals· stakeholder collaboration

Community engagement has become a mainstay for urban planning and disaster risk management. It takes diverse forms, from consultation with female neighborhood leaders, to partnering with universities for data collection and analysis, to local businesses and entrepreneurs bringing innovation into government and humanitarian work. What do we need to do to push the envelope further? In this workshop let’s learn from one another on how to build the capacity of African citizens to protect their own cities from extreme weather, climate change, and disaster risk. This session will be facilitated by experts in the areas of:
– Entrepreneurship in climate change adaptation
– Women’s leadership in tech
– Modern social protection and digital trends
– Geospatial technologies for urban resilience

We will begin with short presentations of recent work done in these fields. Then, experts will facilitate working groups to develop cross-sectoral best practices and lessons learned. Knowledge gathered by these working groups will be consolidated and shared with a wide audience.

Organizer: World Bank

Partner Organizations: Finalizing collaborators/working group facilitators: Ghana Climate Innovation Centre; Vital Voices; Finance, Competitiveness & Innovation (WBG global practice); Education (WBG global practice).


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Preparing Local Communities to Assess Risk and Provide First Aid to Cultural Heritage in Times of Crisis

February 14, 2020 12:58 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Preparing local communities to assess risk and provide first aid to cultural heritage in times of crisis

identify · risk assessment

Cultural heritage is about people, and each community has its own cultural manifestations, tangible and intangible, proudly conserved and protected. But how about awareness about the risk they face? How to identify hazards and the impact over ancient heritage? How to properly act to protect it? When disasters strike, local communities are the first to try and safeguard their cultural heritage. However, their ability to intervene often gets greatly reduced during the emergencies, due to the complexity of the multi-faceted humanitarian crises. At the same time, the first responders’ teams may not always be aware of what is culturally important, or how to prioritize the relevance of cultural values. They often lack the training to properly and securely handle movable heritage, such as historic objects and materials, and asses heritage structures, such as monuments and historic buildings. Likewise, identify and protect intangible heritage is difficult and needs close interaction with the local community.

The International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property (ICCROM) has developed a two-part publication created for the various actors involved in an emergency. It provides a practical method and a set of ready-to-use tools for securing endangered cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. The user-friendly workflows help readers to plan and implement coordinated cultural rescue and risk reduction operations that involve local communities, heritage custodians, emergency responders, and humanitarians.

This session will be divided in two activities:
1. Panel of experts briefly presenting experiences and best practices on protecting movable and intangible heritage at risk, fostering dialogue with the audience in Q&A format;
2. Interactive exercise on community risk mapping, where the audience will become members of a local community to work on groups creating risk maps and prioritizing actions to protect their heritage.

Organizer: ICCROM

Partner organization: Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR)


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Managing climate risk: The way forward

February 14, 2020 12:51 am Published by Leave a comment

  

Managing climate risk: The way forward

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Climate change is taking place at an accelerated pace, and further changes are anticipated due to various factors including global population growth, urbanisation, increased use of fossil fuels and deforestation. The impacts of climate change range from gradual changes in temperature and sea level to extreme weather conditions, including more intense floods, droughts, and storms. These impacts affect the environmental quality and the economic performance of countries. As a result, the lives and livelihoods of people around the world are at risk. Although effective mitigation of the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases is crucial to avert long-term climate changes, some of the impacts projected for the coming decades can no longer be avoided. Given the strong linkages between the impacts of climate change and social and economic systems, it is imperative to develop a comprehensive climate risk management framework and introduce innovative mitigation and adaptation measures by addressing the whole spectrum of risks.

This workshop will bring together the current state of knowledge about the impacts of climate change and promote interactive discussions among participants as to how to assess public perceptions of the risks posed by climate change and to develop strategies to communicate actual risks to different communities. Climate change risk communication will play an important role to change people’s decisions and behaviour towards the environment and reduce their carbon footprints.

Organizer: National University of Singapore