Priority Hazards
Source: 2006 WMO Country-level DRR survey
(http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/drr/natRegCap_en.html)
Droughts, Flash and river floods, forest and wild fires, heat waves and
cold spells, land- and mud-slides, marine and aviation hazards, strong
winds and severe storms, tropical cyclones and storm surges
Other: volcanic ash transport, air pollution, locust swarms, health
epidemics, tsunami, etc…
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About the Workshop
Agenda – Session 2
• Chair: Angelika Wirtz
1) Diversity of disaster risk assessment and analysis stakeholders and their needs
(local, national, regional, global, sectoral, etc) to support a diverse range of
DRR related decisions.
2) Definitions of hazards and related cascading hazards from risk assessment and
analysis perspectives versus meteorological, hydrological and climate
perspectives.
3) Importance of hazard definition, data, metadata, analysis and mapping for
collection of loss and damage data, risk assessment and risk analysis.
4) Needs and requirements of stakeholders that carry out damage and loss analysis,
damage and loss database development, risk assessment and risk analysis for
hazard data, metadata, hazard analysis (historical versus forward looking).
5) Challenges with quality, availability, accessibility of hazard information at
national, regional and global levels for risk assessment and risk analysis.
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Issues discussed (1)
• From Damage and Loss databases to probabilistic risk assessment
and modeling
• Highly diverse needs for risk information for decision-making:
– Intra- and Inter-Sectoral risks, spatial and temporal resolutions of decisionmaking (local, sub national, national, regional and global)
– Definitions of hazards from Risk/decision-making versus technical
perspectives (sources, etc)
– Impacts (loss and damage parameters, scales, quality, etc)
• Institutional Issues for risk information
– Capacities for development of risk information highly varied
– Mandates of institutions (public, private, NGO, academic) (gaps and
overlaps)
– Authoritative versus research
– Decision-based versus technical interest
– Multiple stakeholder (supplier and users of risk info)
– Partnerships and agreements among diverse stakeholder
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Issues discussed (2)
• Technical Issues for Met, hydro and climate community
– Hazard definitions (based on risk/decision-making needs) (source and
cascading hazards) (duration, severity, frequency, location) (multi-hazard and
mutually exclusive)
– Availability, accessibility, quality and format of hazard data and metadata
(temporal and spacial resolutions)
– Changing patterns of hazards (forecasting and modeling)
• Institutional capacities and operational aspects
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–
–
–
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Hazard Observing networks (insitu and space)
Data management systems
Communication systems
Forecasting and modeling
Human resource at NMHS to be able to work at the cross roads of hazard
and risk
– Cooperation with other technical agencies un sharing data and information
– Cooperation with risk assessment/modelling(engineering community
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Needs and Requirements on Hazard
related issues (Historical loss and damage data)
• Hazard Event characterization (definitions) – in terms of
magnitude, duration, location, temporal and spatial variability
• Hierarchy of Hazards – primary large-scale and related
secondary and tertiary localized hazard event identification
• Indexing of hazards – assignment of a standardized, unique
identifying number for each event (i.e. GLIDE)
• Geo-referencing - Attribution of losses
– In real time
– Hazard event historical databases, metadata
• Cooperation with other technical operational agencies (met,
ocean, hydro, geolog) with mandate monitors, detect, collects
data and maintains the databases and metadata
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Probabilistic Risk assessment and
modeling
• Complex and specialized but becoming more popular
• Highly dependent on the nature of the decision for which the
models are being designed
– Parameters, temporal and spatial resolutions, consistency of resolution of
hazard, exposure modeling and related vulnerability curves
• Emerging through private and/or public sectors initiatives
(FEMA, New Zealand, Risk Modelling Companies in
(re)insurance, CCRIF, etc)
• Open source tools are becoming available – CAPRA (World
Bank GFDRR)
• Integrated supply chain of risk information: e.g., Willis Research
Network
– Historical hazard data and metadata, as well as nowcasting, weather and
climate forecasting tools
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Probabilistic Risk Assessment and
Modelling?
• Probabilistic risk assessment provides information on
“what”, “how likely” and “how much”
• Consequences calculated by aggregating losses from
different events
• Hazard and risk expressed in terms of occurrence
rates or exceeding rates
• The uncertainty in the estimation of hazard and
vulnerability is captured
• Possibility to compare and aggregate losses from
different hazards – multi-hazard risk
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Probabilistic Risk assessment and
modeling
Hazard
•
Data and
metadata
•
Nowcast,
Forecasts
Damage
Loss exceedance
Economic
Human
Exposed assets
Vulnerability
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Probabilistic risk assessment datarelated issues
• Hazard module (Historical hazard Data and
metadata):
– Assumption of “mutual exclusivity” of the events, need for calculating correlations of
events
– Definition of the physical quantity describing the hazard intensity according to the
vulnerability curves
– Hazard defined with its spatial variability
– Resolution of the hazard model compatible with the required resolution of the risk
calculation
• Nowcasting, forecasting (short-term weather to climate
timescales)
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Probabilistic risk assessment
Hazard data and metadata issues
• Hazard - input
– Assess the quality of the input to the hazard model (and its propagation to the
output )-> uncertainty analysis
– Completeness and accuracy of temporal series e.g. rainfall, discharges, catalogues
(e.g. earthquake and cyclones)
• Filling the gaps and homogenization?
– Specific characteristics measured differently between datasets (e.g. weir types for
discharges, or sampling intervals or time windows etc)
– Resolution and availability of topographic and bathymetric data
– Accuracy of land use and land cover maps, importantly affecting different
hazards (especially flood and wind) (GIS based information)
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User-Driven Expert Advisory Groups (EAG)
to guide WMO DRR Guidelines and
Capacity development projects
Participating experts from partner agencies
EAG on
Hazard/Risk
Analysis
World Bank, UNDP-GRIP, WFP, UNISDR, UNFCCC, UNEP, UNESCOIOC, UNITAR/UNOSAT, OECD,
Cima Foundation, JRC, GEM, CRED,
Munich Re, Swiss Re, WRN, CEDIM,
Engineering Associations, Experts
from Risk Modelling Sectors, ESRI,
CIMH, RCCs, NMHS and DRM
agencies
CBS, CCL, CHy, CAgM, CIMO,
JCOMM, CAS, Tropical Cyclone
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Program,