A three-day workshop aimed at developing a culture of risk prevention was recently held at UNESCO-IHE from 26 to 28 January. The workshop was a kick-off to launch the EU-funded project KULTURisk. The Project aims to evaluate the benefits of prevention initiatives and is carried out by referring to different types of water-related catastrophes, such as river inundations, urban flash floods, storm surges, debris flows and landslides.
Culture of Risk Prevention
Prevention means preventing disasters from happening (when this is possible), and taking measures to reduce their impacts. The development of a culture of risk prevention requires the improvement of our memory and knowledge of past disasters; communication and understanding capacity of current and future hazards; awareness of risk, and preparedness for future events.
The extreme consequences of the recent catastrophic natural disasters, such as droughts and heat waves, devastating flooding, earthquakes and landslides in Europe alone, have highlighted that risk prevention still needs to be improved to reduce human losses and economic damages.
Disseminate benefits
It is essential to investigate and disseminate the benefits of prevention measures compared to traditional post-disaster recovery. The European commission Solidarity Fund has previously financially supported eight countries to help them recover from flood events, with about 150 million Euros of funding.
In order to demonstrate the advantages of prevention options, an original methodology will be developed throughout this project, applied and validated using specific European case studies, including transboundary areas. The benefits of state-of-the-art prevention measures, such as early warning systems, non-structural options (e.g. mapping and planning), risk transfer strategies (e.g. insurance policy), and structural initiatives, will be demonstrated.
Water-related hazards
KULTURisk will first focus on water-related hazards as the likelihood and adverse impacts of water-related catastrophes might increase in the near future because of land-use and/or climate changes. In particular, a variety of case studies characterised by diverse socio-economic contexts, different types of water-related hazards (floods, debris flows and landslides, storm surges) and space-time scales will be utilised. Finally, the applicability of the KULTURisk approach to different types of natural hazards (e.g. earthquakes, forest fires) will also be analysed.
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