ECHO Workshop 2013

Rue Joseph-II, 79 - Brussels, 15 November 2013

The one-day workshop on international loss data recording organised by the European Commission gathered representatives of Member States (MS), the private sector, academia, international organisations and staff from Commission services. Presentations were given on the various tools currently used to record loss data and provided an opportunity for comments and remarks on the recently-published JRC Scientific and Policy Report 'Recording Disaster Losses: Recommendations for a European approach' (2013). Member States were also given the floor to present a state of play of current activities in the field of loss data recording.

The concluding remarks by the European Commission commended the presentations and discussions held and underlined the relevance of learning more about national initiatives in the field of data loss recording. It will be important to follow the developments in MS, particularly those having presented their initiatives as well as non-European countries such as the US, Albania and Serbia.

The Commission stressed the importance of the road map for future work on loss data recording. 

• A technical meeting to be held on 13-14 February 2014 to discuss loss data recording at country level. This session should focus more on discussions as the necessary introductory presentations have been made in this workshop. It should also remain technical in its focus, looking at details of existing databases and technical issues like for example hazard classification and event identification numbers. Finally, points were made that the next technical meeting should seek ways to better link providers of data with those compiling the databases; and focus on the need for greater institutionalisation in the use and management of databases. 
• Another technical meeting will be held on 21 May 2014 back-to-back with IRDR to look at international and longer-term issues (such as the launch of new WMO standards?) and other technical issues. 
• A third meeting will be held in November 2014 to review the past year's actions and identify deliverables that could then inform the EU discussions/contributions on post-HFA.