Sourcebook for PEARL Risk Root Cause Analysis (original) (raw)

PEARL Risk and Root Cause Assessment Methodology and Applicability

for dissemination, 100 words) This paper describes the novel approaches adopted in PEARL to understand the formation of risk and vulnerability in the case of small-scale but high local impact disasters, namely a qualitative root cause analysis coupled with both a survey-based and spatially-based vulnerability assessment. The paper reflects on the application of these approaches in research sites across Europe and the Caribbean and their integration in a holistic risk assessment model through respective agent-based models. The evolution of both approaches in PEARL is charted, and lessons for other holistic risk assessment frameworks discussed.

Developing Frameworks to Understand Disaster Causation

Journal of Extreme Events, 2016

The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 calls for science to support policy move toward more holistic solutions to disaster risk. This paper outlines an original framework to promote inter-disciplinary research into disaster causation, identifying the basis for holistic solutions. The PEARL Risk Root Cause Analysis framework responds to limits identified in the established FORensic INvestigations of disasters (FORIN) approach to root cause analysis. The paper documents a systematic review of the FORIN approach as a starting point for the development of the PEARL framework. The proposed PEARL framework offers a broad and adaptable conceptual, methodological and practical approach. In particular, we demonstrate the centrality of governance, including the role of disaster risk management in risk creation, of bringing historical insights into contemporary and future scenarios planning and of integrating research methods. These core elements can assist in repositioning science to better support the goals of the Sendai Framework. Read More: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S2345737616500081?src=recsys

The Global Risk Analysis for the 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction

In May 2009, the UNISDR system published the 2009 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction (GAR 2009). One component of this report consisted in a global risk analysis. This task was performed by several institutions which join their efforts during two years to achieve a global modelling of hazards. This includes new hazard models for floods, tropical cyclones, landslides, drought and tsunamis as well as re-interpretation of earthquakes hazard. It allowed for the computation of human and economical exposure. A totally new methodology was used to calibrate vulnerability by using a socalled "event per event" analysis. This allowed determining what are the socio-economical and contextual parameters that are associated with human and economical vulnerability. This new methodology allows considering the intensity of each event as well as contextual parameters in order to compute the risk for different natural hazards. Risk maps were produced for four natural hazards (i.e. floods, earthquakes, landslides and tropical cyclones). This was provided at a resolution of 1 x 1 km. This also allow for the computation of an index for comparing the risk level of different countries. Trend in risk were also studied.

… hazard vulnerability: towards a common approach between disaster risk …

Disasters, 2006

Over the past few decades, four distinct and largely independent research and policy communities-disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, environmental management and poverty reduction-have been actively engaged in reducing socio-economic vulnerability to natural hazards. However, despite the significant efforts of these communities, the vulnerability of many individuals and communities to natural hazards continues to increase considerably. In particular, it is hydrometeorological hazards that affect an increasing number of people and cause increasingly large economic losses. Arising from the realisation that these four communities have been largely working in isolation and enjoyed only limited success in reducing vulnerability, there is an emerging perceived need to strengthen significantly collaboration and to facilitate learning and information exchange between them. This article examines key communalities and differences between the climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction communities, and proposes three exercises that would help to structure a multi-community dialogue and learning process.

Global Disaster Risk: an interpretation of Contemporary trends and patterns

2007

The views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations Secretariat. The designations employed and the presentation of the material do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the UN Secretariat concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries.

Disaster Risk Reduction: Conceptual Shifts

Balkan Social Science Review, 2017

Over the decades, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) has moved from a narrowly perceived technical discipline, to a broad-based global movement focused on sustainable development. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed 230.000 people, served as a catalyst that convinced many skeptics of the importance of DRR. In 2015, policy-makers and practitioners from 168 countries came together in Hyogo, Japan and adopted the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA) 2005-2015: Building the Resilience for Nations and Communities to Disasters. However, HFA had many gaps. Compared to the HFA, the Sendai Framework for DRR (2015-2030) is more far-reaching, holistic and inclusive, and emphasizes the need to address disaster risk management, to reduce existing vulnerability and to prevent the creation of new risks. However, it too has its setbacks. The aim of this paper is to examine the four conceptual or paradigm shifts that occurred in the field of disaster resilience and risk reduction: first, the nature of disasters; second, the shift from disaster management to disaster risk management; third, the shift from monistic to holistic approach that combines DRR, Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Sustainable Development (SD); fourth, from voluntary to obligatory risk reduction. Following the fourth paradigm shift, an upgraded Disaster Resilience Index (DRI) is proposed by Macedonia as an analytical tool that can help policymakers in disaster risk assessment and preparedness.

The PEARL Risk and Root Cause Analysis Framework

This paper defines a framework for the holistic analysis of risk in PEARL as well as a specific risk and root cause analysis framework to guide research in Work Package 1 into the formation of risk and vulnerability in coastal regions. The paper then proposes methods to test a novel risk and root cause assessment framework through the in-depth investigation of case studies.

Disasters should not be the protagonists of Disaster Risk Management

Risk Management (RM) as we know it, refers to the convolute relationship between hazards and vulnerability. Natural, socio-natural and anthropogenic hazards, when mixed with social, environmental, economic and governance vulnerabilities, have considerable estructive power. Recent significant events in Latin America, the Caribbean and other regions of the world have shown that considerable damage could have been avoided, or at least reduced if only a view on risk, more than to disasters would have been applied. According to several sources around two thirds of the total damage could have been spared by using space (land, territory) more wisely, taking better care of the environment, and by offering more options to the chronic impoverishment of our populations. These closely interlinked factors have two common keys, most of the time not well understood nor materialized: policy and strategy. Disasters are socially built; they are the product of a misconception of development processes and a mismanagement of risk. Their evident social, economic and environmental consequences lead us to ask: Has traditional Disaster Risk Management (DRM) been effective? Where are we going with it? Is it true that risk management should always have to be benchmarked against “disaster reduction”? Why should we continue to call it DRM instead of RM? Nowadays the most “à la mode” issue is of course climate change (CC). Why and how has it taken more attention than climate variability (CV), the latter being, at least for the time being, far more damaging for most nations? Does CC really deserve its present priority, particularly after the disappointing results of Copenhagen 2010? What is then to be done about other hazards, not related to climate change? Haven’t they caused and won’t they continue to cause, at least for the time being, more damage than CC? Again, a renewed effort in setting down a clear and sound RM policy and strategy is required. Engineering and scientific communities, even by being able to read Nature’s processes and by having reached a considerable knowledge on hazards, vulnerability and risk, have not yet brought forward a politically effective risk management proposal. We are not persuasive enough. There is something wrong or weak in the way we address the topic, stress our arguments and present our results. It is therefore evident that RM requires new energy, vision and stamina to place it as an integral cross-cutting policy. There is not a single order of priorities because they have to be defined according to the mutating realities and circumstances of each nation and community. However, it seems promising to incorporate RM into national and sub-national development processes, as a cross-cutting multi-sectoral axis for public and private investment. Mitigation should be inspired by the definition of “accepted” rather than “acceptable” risk thresholds, and by metrics establishing sound Cost/Benefit ratios and future loss assessments. But the most important paradigmatic change would be to associate RM with development planning, separate from “disaster management”.