Periodic Reporting for period 1 - MEDiate (Multi-hazard and risk informed system for Enhanced local and regional Disaster risk management)
Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-03-31
Despite recent advances in understanding, modelling, and forecasting natural hazards and how they impact communities, infrastructures and livelihoods, such events can still cause high economic, environmental, and human losses. Actors in disaster risk management are still struggling to successfully plan integrated adaptation and impact mitigation strategies. According to the current practice, different risks are usually tackled following a single hazard and a single risk approach. Indeed, risk governance systems are oriented towards a single risk approach with different risks being addressed by different governmental agencies. Risk analyses are not performed from a multi-disciplinary perspective, integrating physical, economic, and social impacts. Moreover, compounding and cascading effects of hazards, although extensively reviewed and visualized, are not regularly included within risk and resilience assessments.
The overall objective of MEDiate is to contribute to enhancing societal resilience against multiple interacting natural hazards and cascading impacts and strengthen disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk through a framework that not only uses a novel resilience-informed, people-centric and service-oriented approaches, but also accounts for forecasted modifications in the hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. The primary deliverable from MEDiate will be a decision support system in the form of service-orientated web tool and accompanying disaster risk management framework providing end users with the ability to build scenarios, enable more reliable risk and resilience assessments, and to model and evaluate the potential impact of their mitigation and adaptation risk management actions to reduce vulnerability and enhance community resilience. The scenarios can be based on a combination of the historical record and future climate change projections to forecast the location and intensity of climate related disaster events and to predict their impacts, including cascading impacts, on the vulnerability of the local physical, economic and social systems. The project involves a multi-disciplinary team of geophysical and meteorological scientists, risk engineers, social scientists, information technologists and actors in disaster risk management, working together to ensure that the system is user-led and supported by appropriate technology. The project focuses on co-design, co-development and co-evaluation of the solutions with local and regional actors in disaster risk management from four different testbeds: Oslo (Norway), Essex (UK), Nice (France), Mulathing (Iceland).
The overall objective of MEDiate is to contribute to enhancing societal resilience against multiple interacting natural hazards and cascading impacts and strengthen disaster risk governance to manage disaster risk through a framework that not only uses a novel resilience-informed, people-centric and service-oriented approaches, but also accounts for forecasted modifications in the hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. The primary deliverable from MEDiate will be a decision support system in the form of service-orientated web tool and accompanying disaster risk management framework providing end users with the ability to build scenarios, enable more reliable risk and resilience assessments, and to model and evaluate the potential impact of their mitigation and adaptation risk management actions to reduce vulnerability and enhance community resilience. The scenarios can be based on a combination of the historical record and future climate change projections to forecast the location and intensity of climate related disaster events and to predict their impacts, including cascading impacts, on the vulnerability of the local physical, economic and social systems. The project involves a multi-disciplinary team of geophysical and meteorological scientists, risk engineers, social scientists, information technologists and actors in disaster risk management, working together to ensure that the system is user-led and supported by appropriate technology. The project focuses on co-design, co-development and co-evaluation of the solutions with local and regional actors in disaster risk management from four different testbeds: Oslo (Norway), Essex (UK), Nice (France), Mulathing (Iceland).
The core concept that has been adopted for the research and development is based on the well-established Participatory Action Research (PAR) methodology that has guided the co-design, co-development and co-evaluation of the MEDiate DSS. PAR has been implemented as an iterative cyclical process of developing solutions – a journey where group solutions are co-developed (planned), implemented (acted), monitored (observed) and refined (reflection) as part of an iterative change programme. The work that has been performed in the project is divided into 8 technical activities within 5 Work Packages (WPs):
In WP1 the first PAR cycle has been carried out and led to the review of the MEDiate concept model from an academic and end-user perspective. In particular, strategic, tactical, and operational feedback were provided by the four testbeds on the technical/scientific models and the DSS.
In WP2, the focus was the development of the framework for the assessment of current and future multi-hazard interactions, identifying the primary interacting hazards and the primary cascading impacts for European areas. At this stage, WP2 is now in the phase of creating new multi-hazard indicators that will support risk-based assessments, including the DSS.
The work carried out in WP3 led to the development and integration of a risk and resilience modelling framework that will underpin the DSS. As part of this objective, the work involved modelling physical impacts and social consequences of multi-hazards and developing innovative risk and resilience metrics that extend beyond the economic losses considered as part of conventional risk assessment approaches.
In WP4, the focus was the implementation of one of the WP objectives, which is the creation of MEDiate-DSS platform to compute and visualize physical and social risks for multi-hazard scenarios. The DSS will assist end-users in the decision-making process by simulating mitigation actions and observing their impact on the risk and resilience metrics. This effort has led to the release of the beta version of the platform which is now available.
The focus in WP5 was on the implementation of the second and third PAR cycle in the four MEDiate testbeds. The newly developed beta version of the platform has been distributed to the four testbeds leaders, where large groups of stakeholders and associate stakeholders are engaged together in the co-design, co-development, and co-evaluation process.
In WP1 the first PAR cycle has been carried out and led to the review of the MEDiate concept model from an academic and end-user perspective. In particular, strategic, tactical, and operational feedback were provided by the four testbeds on the technical/scientific models and the DSS.
In WP2, the focus was the development of the framework for the assessment of current and future multi-hazard interactions, identifying the primary interacting hazards and the primary cascading impacts for European areas. At this stage, WP2 is now in the phase of creating new multi-hazard indicators that will support risk-based assessments, including the DSS.
The work carried out in WP3 led to the development and integration of a risk and resilience modelling framework that will underpin the DSS. As part of this objective, the work involved modelling physical impacts and social consequences of multi-hazards and developing innovative risk and resilience metrics that extend beyond the economic losses considered as part of conventional risk assessment approaches.
In WP4, the focus was the implementation of one of the WP objectives, which is the creation of MEDiate-DSS platform to compute and visualize physical and social risks for multi-hazard scenarios. The DSS will assist end-users in the decision-making process by simulating mitigation actions and observing their impact on the risk and resilience metrics. This effort has led to the release of the beta version of the platform which is now available.
The focus in WP5 was on the implementation of the second and third PAR cycle in the four MEDiate testbeds. The newly developed beta version of the platform has been distributed to the four testbeds leaders, where large groups of stakeholders and associate stakeholders are engaged together in the co-design, co-development, and co-evaluation process.
The state-of-the-art in multi-hazard and risk assessments has been advanced, bringing together the disciplines of climate and earth sciences, engineering, management technology and social sciences, and various stakeholders in disaster risk management to characterize risk and resilience from an end-user perspective. The dynamic nature of risk and resilience has also been accounted for, allowing the visualization of complex multi-hazard scenarios, including compounding effects and cascading impacts, for improved preparedness of local and regional authorities to natural disasters. The work accomplished provides an innovative means of quantifying hazard interactions, compounding and cascading impacts with scale of assessment that can range from local to regional, and uptake across the European region. The work also provides means of harmonizing multi-hazard physical and social vulnerabilities in risk and resilience assessment.