Disasters caused by natural hazards have devastating impacts on communities and cause colossal economic and population losses. Yet disasters are avoidable. Risk management looks to understand their underlying causes in order to reduce their impact through evidence based policymaking, planning, and development. Risk assessment is therefore crucial for the protection of people and the environment.
Department activities – The Risk Assessment and Loss Data Department is specialized in modelling risk and impacts linked to natural hazards, with a special focus on floods. Statistical approaches are used to combine hazard information with data describing exposure characteristics (i.e. population, built-up, service and productive systems or the environment), as well as vulnerability, the predisposition of exposed elements to be adversely affected by hazards. Common products for such activities are probabilistic risk profiles or impact assessment studies. Special effort is dedicated to the integration of global (satellites or non-satellite) information with local data in order to obtain the best representation of exposure and vulnerability fitting to the purposes of the specific study. To this end, specific tools have been developed for use at the national or international level.
The department is specialized in the collection and analysis of disaster loss data, which is extremely important in order to understand disaster patterns, as well as for calibration and/or validation of risk assessment models. In addition, through the proper collection of loss data, it is possible to monitor risk trends in a given area, and to evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of disaster risk reduction strategies.
The research of the department provides decision-makers with the methodological and informatics tools to properly integrate risk information into the decision-making process.
Risk assessments need to consider environmental, social, and economic impacts in multiple time periods and for different spatial scales. The department therefore needs to be very multi-disciplinary. Within its research projects, the department usually works directly with stakeholders to define objectives, develop proper risk assessment instruments, and provide capacity building actions.
