May 14-18, 2018: Two Alliance partners will be showcasing their work from the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance at the Understanding Risk Forum this year in Mexico City. Here is everything you need to find out more, whether you are attending or not.

Understanding Risk brings together the global community of experts and practitioners active in the creation, communication, and use of disaster risk information. The event features five-days that highlight groundbreaking work, facilitate nontraditional partnerships, and showcase new technical know-how in disaster risk identification. 

Alliance partners presentation schedule

From the Alliance

Side event: Community flood resilience – Can you measure it, yes you can! Experiences of using the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance Measurement Tool

At UR 2014 the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance introduced their innovative approach to understanding and building flood resilience. Four years later, they are back, this time presenting the findings from the pilot of the Flood Resilience measurement for community tool. The ‘tool’ has come a long way since 2014, it has been applied in over 120 communities across the world and these first results show not only the validity of the method, but also shed light on what communities can do to build meaningful resilience on the ground.

The session will show how the tool has supported communities to better understand their resilience options, and how it can inform humanitarian and development project implementation and programming as well as policy and research.

Tuesday, May 15, 9:00 – 10:30

Read this co-authored article on the development and testing of the tool to find out more

From IIASA

Session: From space to finance: a new framework for earth observation, humanitarian, and insurance sectors

Organized by NASA, the session examines the potential for integrating Earth observation data, risk information products, and decision support tools in order to make substantive improvements in risk readiness and action. IIASA will present its innovative crowd-souring and citizen science work as conducted in Peru and Nepal

Monday, May 14, 2:00pm – 5:00pm

Session:Comprehensive climate risk management – dealing with climate-related loss and damage

The session convened by GIZ introduces the concept of climate risk management as a comprehensive approach to deal with potential future loss and damage that go beyond the ability of communities and countries to adapt to climate-related risks. IIASA will present science-based approaches and an application to India.

Monday, May 14, 2:00pm – 5:00pm

Session: Comprehensive climate risk management for resilient SMEs

The GIZ run session discusses comprehensive climate risk assessments and smart management options for small-and medium sized enterprises. IIASA will present global insight from its Resilience Measurement.

Tuesday, May 15, 11:30am – 1:00pm

See all these events on IIASA’s website

From Practical Action

Session:Reaching the last mile: challenges and lessons from early warning systems

This session will be run by Practical Action to facilitate a discussion to identify the different needs, challenges, and opportunities for effective and inclusive early warning systems, and shares lessons of success (and failure). If we can tailor early warning systems to reach the last mile, including the most vulnerable and marginalised populations, we can improve the current systems, saving more lives and livelihoods of those at risk. Short presentations will include representatives from BBC Media Action, Red Cross Climate Centre, and the UK Met Office exploring key issues on reaching the last mile. This session will be very interactive, taking the opportunity to share with and learn from the participants.

Tuesday, May 15, 4:30pm – 6:00pm

Read Alison Sneddon’s blog on why is it critical to consider gender when designing flood early warning systems

Session: Many small drops make a big flood: Global flood partnership

Mirianna Budimir from Practical Action will be giving a 10 minute presentation during this session convened by the Global Flood Partnership, Columbia University and the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre. She will be talking about the use of global and local flood information and forecasts in Nepal. Including the use of the information in early warning systems, how the information is used and the pros and cons of local vs. global. The session aims share innovation and develop collaborations and partnerships for global flood forecasting, monitoring and impact assessment

Monday, May 14, 9:00am – 1:00pm

Session: Understanding cascading events: Earth, wind and fire

Mirianna will also be speaking on the panel at this session convened by FM Global. During this interactive session participants will examine key factors that determine a nation’s resilience in the face of cascading events such as hurricanes, earthquakes, fires and floods – and the costs/resilience benefits associated with each.

Friday, May 18, 11:15 – 12:45