Office for Outer Space Affairs United Nations Office at Vienna

International Disaster Research Programmes: From research to resilience

Juan Carlos Villagran de Leon,

UN-SPIDER

GEOSS S&T Stakeholder Workshop "GEOSS: Supporting Science for

the Millennium Development Goals and Beyond",

Bonn, Germany, August 28—31, 2012

Office for Outer Space Affairs United Nations Office at Vienna

A Historical perspective: The 1990sResearch efforts targeted hazards, but began to include vulnerability and risk.

The notion was put forward that the frameworks of development used by developing countries were not addressing the root causes of disasters.

The International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction IDNDR

The Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Programme (GSHAP)

The Latin American Network of Social Studies focusing on the Prevention of Disasters launched in 1992.

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By 2004…

Research conducted by international organizations

UNDP-BCPR generated its report Reducing Disaster Risk, a Challenge for Development (disaster-risk index, relative vulnerability)

The World Bank launched its flagship publication: Natural Disaster Hotspots: A Global Risk Analysis.

Research fuelled by the 26 December 2004 tsunami

Improvements on tsunami early warning; more comprehensive tsunami risk assessment; etc

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Users of such global risk information?

Donor community

National Governments

Using results of global risk assessments as a way to prioritize funding efforts… but not all developing countries share the same views…

As a way to raise awareness on the need for technical assistance.

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The 2005 World Conference on Disaster Reduction

As an outcome of the World Conference on Disaster Reduction held in Kobe, Japan (Jan. 2005); The Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) was launched.

Governments reiterate that risk management is a national responsibility.

The HFA promotes 5 priority areas, including:• The adoption of policies at

the national level targeting risk management;

• The assessment or risks as the way to identify disaster-risk reduction efforts.Research programmes begin to

tackle the root causes of risks which lead to disasters.

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… following up on some effortsThe Global Seismic Hazard Assessment Programme

The Latin American Network of Social Studies focusing on Disasters begins to address this issue.

ISDR and the HFA

The Global Earthquake Model, now focusing on seismic risk.http://www.globalquakemodel.org

The Network continues to be active, researching links between risks, climate change and sustainable developmenthttp://www.desenredando.org/

ISDR requesting, under the HFA, progress reports on advances at country level.

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Ongoing international research efforts

ICSU & ISSC

IHDP

EC – FP7

IPCC

Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR)http://www.icsu.org/publications/reports-and-reviews/IRDR-science-planIntegrated Risk Governance Projecthttp://www.irg-project.org

Several ongoing projects: emBRACE, KULTURisk; Disaster, Chorist, Oasis, SYNER-G, Matrix, etc.

Recently incorp0rated research on the links between climate change and disaster-risks.

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Research efforts – geospatial information

GEO project

UN-SPIDER

UN-SPIDER & RSOs

Caribbean Flood Pilot project - NASA, CSA, CEOS, CDEMA, UN-SPIDER, CATHALAC, UWI, etc.

VALID project (UN-SPIDER, ISPRS, JBGIS, ITHACA, etc.) http://www.un-spider.org/VALID-stakeholder-assessment-I

Tracking how land-use changes are modifying the spatial and temporal behavior of hazards using archived satellite imagery.

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UN-SPIDER finding´s on how Geo-spatial data is used in governments (preliminary outcomes)

Geographic Institutes

Ministries of Environment

Disaster-risk reduction and Emergency Response agencies

As inputs to update cartographic maps and to generate a variety of other maps.

As a way to monitor protected areas, environmental degradation, forest reserves, land-use change.

To a lesser degree, mostly in the context of emergency response still.

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The interaction between decision makers and the research community

Issues to be confronted:

Language barriers: language of probabilities (scientific community) versus language of certainties (authorities);

Decision makers do not read scientific papers in journals; yet scientists are pressured to publish results in such journals (publish or perish);

Decision makers rarely allocate sufficient time to discuss relevant issues with scientists;

Decision makers usually operate on a “response” mode to needs and wishes of their communities;

Disaster-risk reduction efforts are not high in the mind of voters when making choices.

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Emerging trends seen as opportunities:

Sustainable Development

Climate Change

ISDR

Global Economic crises

Rio+20 Conference now includes a segment on the need to target disaster risk reduction as a way to “disaster-proof” efforts on sustainable development.

We seem now to recognize more and more that climate change is making hydrometeorologic events more intense and more frequent .

ISDR conducting a Post-2015 scoping assessment.

There is now an awareness on the links between economic crisis, poverty and incapacities to cope with disasters. Research is needed to understand links between thse crisis, livelihoods, poverty, and vulnerability.

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From research to resilience

GSHAP

La Red (LAC)

ISDR

UN-SPIDER UNDP, UNESCO, OCHA, etc

A proposal for the global use of PGA as the parameter to assess seismic hazard that can be used by civil engineers. A framework employed by Governments to modify their policies to incorporate disaster-risk management.

The HFA as a vehicle to promote resilience facilitating the incorporation of knowledge emerging from the research community.

Vehicles to promote the application of scientific outputs: provision of policy-relevant advice, capacity building and institutional strengthening - governments

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From knowledge to resilience

Identify the interfaces that allow developing countries, which are most vulnerable to disasters, to become aware of recent advances emerging from the scientific community;

Contribute to promote a culture targeting the generation of precise and reliable information on which to make decisions targeting disaster-risk management and sustainable development;

Keep in mind opportunities to channel policy-relevant advice stemming from research efforts through the United Nations organizations in the case of developing countries.

Take advantage of emerging opportunities to enhance the role of GEOSS.

Concluding remarks:

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THANK YOU!THANK YOU!

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Juan-Carlos.Villagran@unoosa.org