20th - 21st June 2017, Ispra, Italy
The importance of collaboration between disaster managers and scientists in emergencies is widely recognized. The promotion of the application of science and technology to decision-making as well as the need for a stronger dialogue between practitioners and researchers are key in the context of, e.g. the implementation of the Sendai Framework. The Sendai Framework reinforces, in fact, a culture of disaster risk reduction based on the enhancement of the cooperation among different stakeholders.
There are many initiatives in Europe that bring together scientists, practitioners and other stakeholders for different purposes. Some of these initiatives are scientific partnerships aimed to facilitate the exchange of scientific-based information. For instance, GDACS (Global Disasters Alerts and Coordination System) that estimates the impact of natural disasters and provides alerts after major disasters, or EFAS (European Flood Awareness System) which monitors and forecasts floods across Europe. Cooperation frameworks, such as GDACS, and experts groups go in the direction of coordinating the efforts through working groups or science-policy interface partnerships focused on, inter alia, information exchange or operational preparedness.
Drawing from the experience and the lessons learnt over the last few years, multi-hazard scientific partnerships which have at their core collaborative networks of scientific and operational experts, have been established in pilot projects like ARISTOTLE which aims to provide accurate information on national disaster to the European Commission Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC). Within ARISTOTLE, analyses from the scientific community are provided to EC disaster managers within a few hours after disasters.
Outcome of the Workshop