New data to boost Europe’s resilience against natural disasters
From floods and avalanches to earthquakes and heatwaves, natural hazards or disasters can devastate entire communities. The EU-funded EMBRACE (Building resilience amongst communities in Europe) project sought to support European communities in recovering from such disasters. Bringing together 11 partners from across the continent, EMBRACE created a powerful interdisciplinary consortium that addressed different angles of resilience and recovery. It built and analysed case studies on floods in Central Europe, earthquakes in Turkey, and landslides and other alpine hazards in Italy Switzerland, as well as heatwaves and floods in the UK. To achieve its aims, the project team built on previous research by developing indicators to measure resilience in the context of natural disasters. It modelled community resilience and built a resilience framework that was tested in different cultural contexts. This also involved building networks and sharing knowledge among stakeholders, as well as disseminating project outcomes, tools and results to concerned users. One area the project focused on was enhancing civil protection, specifically emergency response and learning from experience. This involved putting in place effective warning systems and making sure the community becomes stronger in the future. The work achieved under the project empowers communities to manage and evaluate their own risks, recognising community members’ abilities and potential contributions. The leverage of such skills, resources and community networks is especially important in contexts where governments lack or do not prioritise adequate funding against disaster risk management. By the end of the project, the team had produced a policy brief, factsheets, working papers, teacher/training materials, and an online handbook on building resilience; a book of the project outputs, to be published by Wiley, will be completed in 2016. These outputs will go a long way in advancing Europe’s preparedness for natural disasters when they strike.
Keywords
Natural hazards, disasters, EMBRACE, floods, avalanches, earthquakes, heatwaves, community resilience
