Annual Report 2020

Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes
Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes

GADRI Annual Report 2020—1

The Global Alliance ofDisaster ResearchInstitutes (GADRI)GADRI Secretariat is hosted by:Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI)
Kyoto University, Uji Campus, Kyoto, JapanGADRI Annual Report 2020—2

In November 2011, the Disaster Prevention
Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University held theFirst Global Summit of Research Institutes for
Disaster Risk Reduction which was held at DPRI,
Kyoto University, Uji Campus, Kyoto, Japan inNovember 2011. At the conference, it was the
proposed to establish a network of disaster research
institutes to be fostered by DPRI, Kyoto University tobring together research institutes working on disasterrisk prevention and mitigation in various disciplines.

In compliance with the recommendations of the 2011
Global Summit, the Global Alliance of Disaster
Research Institutes (GADRI) was launched with amandate to support the implementation of the Sendai
Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030
during Second Global Summit held at DPRI, Kyoto
University, Uji Campus, Kyoto, Japan in March 2015
which was held soon after the UN World Conference
on Disaster Risk Reduction (WCDRR, 2015) which
took place in Sendai, Japan. The 2011 Global
Summit paved the way to start the Global Summit
series of GADRI.
Currently, GADRI members are involved in the
Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG), and
the Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF) of
the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction(UNDRR). GADRI works closely with the scienceand technology community collaborating in research,endorsing policies related to disaster risk reduction,and disseminating and sharing cutting-edgeknowledge and information supported by evidencebased research among research institutions,international organizations and the private sector invarious nation states. GADRI community continue to
evolve and strengthen research activities towards
disaster risk reduction and management and find
implementable solutions to achieve disaster
resilience in the world.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—3

Contents

Table of Contents•

Message from the Secretary-General,
GADRI

•

We thank and

GADRI Activities in 2020•

GADRI Book Series•

3rd GADRI Open Discussion Forumacknowledge support by
all members for their
inputs to the GADRI•

Annual Report 2020.

GADRI Secretariat
Disaster Prevention ResearchInstitute (DPRI), Kyoto University•

Keeping in touch with Members of GADRI•

Americas

•

Asia

•

Japan

•

Oceania•

Europe•AfricaGeographical Distribution of GADRIUji Campus, Gokasho, Uji Shi
Kyoto 611-0011, Japan
Tel: +81-0774-38-4651
E-mail: secretariatgadri@dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Web: http://gadri.net

GADRI Annual Report 2020 is the
Secretariat.

property of GADRI

Edited and designed by Hirokazu Tatano and Wilma James.
Copyright © 2020by GADRI Secretariat.
All rights reserved. GADRI Annual Report 2020 or any portion
thereof may not be reproduced or used in any
mannerwhatsoever without the express written permissionofthe publisher—GADRI Secretariat.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—4

GADRI
Annual Report
2020

GADRI Annual Report 2020—5

Message from theSecretary-General, GADRI

Judging from the activities, GADRI members areundeterred by the COVID-19 and have continued
to sail though this phenomenal year of 2020.
We hope you are staying safe and keeping
well.
I would like to start by thanking you for yourcontinued support and contributions to theactivities of GADRI and working together in ourmutual cause to reduce disaster risk reduction
and management. A special thank you is to
our members of the GADRI Board of Directors
and the Advisory Board. They have tirelessly
contributed to GADRI activities and attended
the meetings throughout the year.
This year has been exceptionally challenging
for all of us. But we have been resilient andsteadfast in our research as well as in personal
lives too. We have also seen where theresearch gaps are and where we need to focus
more and strengthen our research. We haveused the occasion to gather data which will
prepare us for future disasters.
Despite the lockdowns and with your help,
GADRI continued to move forward.
1.

rd

Held the 3 Open Discussion Forum of
GADRI in February 2020. Just before thepandemic.

2 In-person meeting of the GADRI Board of
Directors and the Advisory Board in
February 2020.
3. GADRI initiative to write a letter to the editor
on the Corona Virus.
4. Publication of the first book by Prof. Muneta
Yokomatsu and Dr. Stefan HochrainerStigler on Disaster Risk Reduction andResilience under the Disaster Risk andResearch: GADRI Book Series throughSpringer Japan - https://www.springer.com/
gp/book/9789811543197

5. Published the GADRI Newsletter - https://
gadri.net/resources/publications/
6. Published the 2019 Annual Report of
GADRI
https://gadri.net/resources/
publications/6.

The long-waited Proceedings of the 3rd
Global Summit will be out in January 2020

7. Held once a month online meeting of the
GADRI Board of Directors and the Advisory
Board
8. Preparing to hold the 5th Global Summit of
GADRI: Engaging Sciences with Action
virtually from 31st August to 1st September
2021.
In addition, there were other committee
meetings held in-person and via zoom with thefaculty members at the Disaster Prevention
Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University.
We are hoping that we will continue our efforts
to expand our activities and explore new paths
to promote disaster risk reduction around theworld.

We take this opportunity to thank all of you forbeing part of GADRI.

Hirokazu Tatano
Secretary-General, GADRI; andVice-Director, DPRI, Kyoto University,
Japan

GADRI Annual Report 2020—6

GADRI Vision
To deepen the understanding of disasters and find implementable solutions to achieve
disaster resilience, by integrating knowledge and technologies from around the world.

GADRI Objectives•

To support the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction 2015-2030•

To establish a global research network that promotes and engages disaster
research.

•

To provide a research road map, with plans that help facilitate the organization ofdisaster research groups.

•

To promote capacity building and development of disaster research institutes andenhances researcher and student exchange.

•

To promote exchange and sharing of data and information for scientific researchacross the globe.

•

To serve as an advocacy organization presenting
approaches that influence decision-making processes.

evidence-based

GADRI Activities•

Planning and organization of regionally or globally
research initiatives•

Formation of international research groups to investigate current global disasters,
and implement new research methodologies for disaster risk reduction andimplementation•

Establishment of an international network for timely communication related toresearch on disasters•

Organization of conferences, workshops and meetings•

Dissemination and sharing of information, publications, reports, data and otherresearch outputs•

Facilitation of rapid reconnaissance field surveys following disasters•

collaborative disaster risk

Preparation
of
GADRI
news
releases,policyrecommendations, news bulletins, research reports, and otherpublications.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—7

Disaster and Risk Research:
GADRI Book Series
The first book on “Disaster
Risk
ReductionandResilience” by Dr. Stefan
Hochrainer-Stigler and Dr.
MunetaYokomatsu
waspublished by Springer.
This volume discusses how
disasterrisk
reductionenhances
resilienceondifferent
scales(global,regional, national, community,
household)fromvarioushazards. The introduction
defines terms, followed by asection which examines thenatural environment and how
resilience flows from disasterrisk reduction, across a wide

Disaster and Risk Research: GADRIBook Series is published under the
auspices of the Global Alliance ofDisaster Research Institutes (GADRI).
The global status of disaster researchreflects the major strides made in thedisaster sciences. These volumes
present the forefront of disaster
research,includingkeyscientificfindings,
methodologies,
policyrecommendations and case studies.
Whilst disaster risk needs to be managed
in an integrated manner, persistently
isolated applications of knowledge,
practice and policy are falling short ofensuring disaster-resilient societies.
Responding to this deficit calls formeasurement, tools, techniques andinstitutional structures that can realisticallysupport comprehensive risk assessmentand management across multiple hazard
landscape. As such, disaster research is
now faced with a multi-disciplinary, multistakeholder challenge. Contributions tothis series therefore address many varied
and critical opportunities to advance thesubject area. A cross-cutting vision sharedacross the Disaster and Risk Researchvolumes is to improve the future ofscientific and technological guidance withclearly identifiable roadmaps to ensure
human safety and security.

https://www.springer.com/series/16177

variety of natural hazards.
Section II then examines thebuilt and social environment,
focusing on how resiliencecan be enhanced in thevarious aspects of theseenvironments.
Section III
then provides cross-cuttingcase studies of enhanced
resilience, across a wide
variety of societies andapplications. Lastly, Section
IV concludes the volume withan overview of the current
state of disaster risk reduction
for resilience, and what isneeded to achieve a resilient
future.

Other Books Approved by the Publisher

1

Published in 2020: Proceedings of the 4th Global Summit of
Research Institutes for Disaster Risk Reduction Editors: Hirokazu Tatano, Andrew Collins, Wilma James,
Title: Enhancing Risk Governance to Manage Disaster Risks

2

Proposed editors: Masamitsu Onishi, Yuichi Ono
Coordinating editor: Masamitsu Onishi
Title: Health and Disaster Risk and Management

3

Proposed Editors: Virginia Murray, Andrew Collins, Ryoma
Kayano, Emily Chan
Associate editors: Sakiko Kanbara, Sachiko Nakamura,
Kevin Blanchard
Coordinating editor: Virginia Murray

45

6

Title: Global Disasters of 2017-2018
Editors: Charles Scawthorn and Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany
Strategic inclusion of Eco-system-based Disaster Resilience
Editors: Mahua Mukherjee and Rajib Shaw
Deepening the Understanding of Risks: Atmospheric andHydro-meteorological Disasters

Proposed Editors: Wei-Sen Li, Kaoru Takara, Srikantha
Herath, Tetsuya Sumi, Sameh Kantoush, Tetsuya Takemi,
Kazuyoshi Nishijima
Social Dimensions of Disaster Risk

7

Editors: Andrew Collins, Masamitsu Onishi, and Subhajyoti
Samaddar

GADRI Annual Report 2020—8

Published

Proceedings of the 3rd Global
SummitofDisaster
Research
Institutes
forDisaster
Risk
Reduction
By Hirokazu Tatano and Andrew Collins
This book presents selected papers from the 3rd
Global Summit of Research Institutes for
Disaster Risk Reduction which focused on“Expanding the Platform for Bridging Scienceand Policy Making” which was held at theDisaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI),
Kyoto University, Uji Campus from 19 to 21
March 2017. The conference not only provided
a platform for discussion and exchange of
information on most important current and future
research projects in disaster risk reduction andmanagement but also promoted active dialogue
through group discussion sessions that were
held according to various disaster researchdisciplines. To facilitate the group discussion
sessions, a prior survey was conducted toevaluate the current research status and identify
the most important future research themes andprojects. This document was shared with eachgroup leader. The 3rd

Global Summit was organized by the Global
Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes(GADRI) which was established soon after thesecond Global Summit and the UN World
Conference Disaster Risk Reduction in March
2015, aims to support implementation of the
Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction
2015-2030.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—9

Proceedings of the 4th Global Summitof Disaster Research Institutes for
Disaster Risk Reduction
By Hirokazu Tatano and Andrew Collins
The Fourth Global Summit of Research Institutes
for Disaster Risk Reduction (4th GSRIDRR,
2019): Increasing the effectiveness andrelevance of our institutes, sponsored by GADRI
and Kyoto University, was hosted and held at theDisaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI),
Kyoto University, Uji Campus, Kyoto, Japan from13 to 15 March 2019. The Global Summit series
provided a platform for researchers, practitioners,
policy makers, and other stakeholders in bothEnhancing Risk Governance to Manage
Disaster Risks

By Masamitsu Onishi and Yuichi Ono
This book provides state-of-the-arts of researches in
integrated disaster risk management fields
specifically from the aspect of governance. The
Sendai Framework 2015 addresses the significanceof governance in managing disaster risks. Subjects
relevant to the governance include different levels
from the international and national level to themunicipalityorsmaller
community
level.
Mechanisms of governance at different levels are

GLOBAL DISASTERS OF 2017-2018
By Charles Scawthorn
Ghafory-Ashtiany

andMohsengovernment and non-governmental institutes
involved in disaster risk reduction and resilience
to come together to discuss, share and exchange
ideas. It specifically focused on contributing
inputs to the contextualization and revising thegoals of the 2016 Science and Technology
Roadmap to implementation of the Priority Areasof the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction Agenda 2015-2030; and inputs for
GADRI to move forward in its contributions to thescience community in the world.

interrelated each other. Therefore, a variety of actual
governance forms for DRR is observed in different
contexts of hazards, geographical conditions andsocial norms. It implies the advantage of pursuing agovernance pattern for DRR fitting for the hazardspecific and local-specific context rather than onesize-fits-all approach. To understand the variety ingovernance patterns, explicit knowledge on thecompatibility between governance pattern andcontexts is necessary.

A section also deals with the issues and current
state of the art of global disaster databases. The
volume is intended as the first of a biannual series
on global disasters, compiled from GADRI Summits.

The book is a compendium of papers from the 4th
GADRI Summit, summarizing major disasters that
occurred in 2017 and 2018 (see table of contents).
The disasters range across the globe including Asia,
North and South America and the Pacific.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—10

Health and Disaster Risk Management

By Virginia Murray, Andrew Collins, Ryoma
Kayano and Emily Chan
• Health is a key element of the Sendai Frameworkand the other landmark 2015 agreements
including the SDGs and Paris Climate Change
Agreements. Emphasis will be placed on
population vulnerability at all levels including thoseof that are marginalized, young, old, disabled, andthose that have non-communicable diseases, aremigrants and are of indigenous origin.

• Under the Sendai Framework agreement, building
resilient health systems through integration of allhazards disaster risk management within healthcare and wellbeing is essential

Strategic inclusion of Eco-system based
Disaster Resilience
By Mahua Mukherjee and Rajib ShawThis book will aim to provide an introduction tocritical role of Eco-system based Disaster Risk
Resilience (Eco-DRR) for building community
resilience to multiple environmental risks like risingheat, water stress, pollution etc. Blue-GreenInfrastructure (BGI) are Eco-DRR tool which is anunder-explored paradigm and can respond as one
common strategy to targets set by Sustainable
Development Goals (UNDP), Climate Agreements(UNEP), Sendai Framework (UNISDR) and New
Urban Agenda (UNCHS).

• Capacity development of health professionals at alllevels in understanding disaster risk reduction andmanagement is vital. |An all hazards approachdemands an inclusive risk management system, ofdisaster preparedness for effective response to“Build Back Better” in recovery, rehabilitation andreconstruction as continuous quality improvement
process of the health system.
• Research needs to deliver evidence informed
Health and Disaster Risk and Management
approaches that will be addressed in this bookwhich will provide resource to facilitate how thesegoals can be addressed

opportunity creation for Eco-DRR. Role of policy,
science research and implementations will bepresented cohesively. An attractive proposition ofthis book is a bouquet of case-studies from different
parts of the world where integration of BGI are
experimented with various levels of success. It isenvisaged that shared tacit experiences from therealm of practices will strengthen explicit knowledge
further.

The book will deliberate on Need and Context
Building, Policy and Science (investigation, analysis
and design), Case studies and Future Road map in
4 successive parts. Each part will be self-sufficient
yet linked to its predecessor and/ or successor as
the case may be.

The book is intended to be comprehensive
beginning to systematic discussion on this emerging
resilience tool. Our purpose is to introduce readers
to the challenging context of development and

GADRI Annual Report 2020—11

Social Dimensions of Disaster Risk

By Andrew Collins, Masamitsu Onishi,
and Subhajyoti Samaddar
This book brings together contiguous andinterrelated aspects of people centered disasterrisk
forbetterunderstanding
amongstpractitioners, policy makers, postgraduate andundergraduate students. It responds toincreasing demands to address risk as bothcause and consequence of human struggle.
Using an array of examples, the book examines
how people are responding to, and living with
old and new risks that are partly understood.
Sentient people mediate risk through social
relations and actions stemming from varying
systems of meaning. This is explored throughthe different social contexts and adjustmentsthat occur in times of crises exemplifying how
people in groups or as individuals negotiate
future safety and security.

Deepening the Understanding of Risks:Atmospheric and Hydro-meteorological
Disasters
By Wei-Sen Li, Kaoru Takara, Srikantha
Herath, Tetsuya Sumi, Sameh Kantoush,
Tetsuya Takemi, Kazuyoshi Nishijima
This book will focus on atmospheric & hydrometeorologicaldisastersfromscientific,
engineering and implementation perspectives. The
disasters could be caused by extreme
meteorological phenomena at various spatial

The book presents an array of complex
disruptive aspects of the people centred
responses to living with risk, including conflict,health, mobility, communication, faith, capacityand politics. An outcome of this publication is toconsolidate a contribution to decision making
processes in disaster interventions that theseries of chapter orient including through uniqueand co-produced analysis. The contributions
herein represent smart accounts that combine
underlying philosophical challenges of thesubject with identifying what really addresses
disaster risk. This involves studies of real world
complex hazard, disaster and risk challenges
and opportunities. It brings seemingly disparate
chapter topics together into a common agendaof addressing humanity’s social interaction withcrises that can be both rare and a part ofeveryday life.

scales. Under changing climate, these extreme
phenomena are anticipated to intensify and hence
to become more disastrous. Therefore, a special
emphasis is given on the impact assessment ofchanging climate.

The understanding of the risk is decomposed into
the understanding of physical mechanisms for the
responses of disaster-spawning extreme weather
to global warming, changes in statistics of extreme
hazard events, and responses of built environment
to the extreme events. The chapters consist ofcontributions
fromscientists,
researchers,
engineers and practitioners.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—12

GADRI Connections with UNDRR

Global Risk Assessment Framework(GRAF)GADRI is a member of the
ScienceandTechnology
Advisory Group (STAG); andGADRI was elected as amember of the Expert Group on
the Global Risk Assessment
Framework (GRAF) and continue
to closely support the works with
the United Nations Office forDisaster
Risk
Reduction(UNDRR), Geneva, Switzerland.

GADRI was elected as a member of the Expert
Group on the Global Risk Assessment Framework(GRAF) which was established as an important
global initiative to support the implementation of the
Sendai Framework Agenda for 2015-2030. The
establishment of the Expert Group was one of theprincipal recommendations of the
The initial responsibility of the Expert Group is toprovide guidance and direction in the co-designand collaborative development of the GRAF,
including strategic, technical, functional andoperational aspects. The Expert Group will guidethe development and co-creation of a preliminary
implementation roadmap, including the definitionand possible composition of the GRAF SubWorking Groups that will need to be established tosupport the co-design and development process.

Further details available at GADRI Actions—http://
gadri.net/resources/pdf/GANewsletter_AugDec_2018.pdf

GADRI Annual Report 2020—13

GADRI Lecture Series
The Spring Session of the GADRI Lecture Series was held at theDisaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, UjiCampus, Kyoto, Japan on 25th February 2020. The following prominent
professors delivered the lectures to DPRI students and faculty members.
Prof. Andrew Collins and Prof. Gretchen Kalonji are members of the
GADRI Board of Directors while Prof. John Clammer is a member of
GADRI.

Prof. Andrew
Collins, Leader,Disaster andDevelopment
Network,
Northumbria
University
Newcastle, United Kingdom
Andrew Collins is Professor in Disaster andDevelopment, Department of Geography. Beyond
research, local teaching and management
responsibilities, he represents disaster, development
and health related initiatives internationally. Beyond
his regular research, teaching and management
responsibilities, he represents disaster, development
and health related initiatives internationally. He
gained his PhD from King’s College London in
Human Geography.
Lecture title: Systematising and Desystematising the Societal Contributions toDisaster Risk Reduction

thinking about how societies actually engages withrisks. It doesn’t always fit into a neat systemic type ofanalysis. There is an increasing interest in systemicrisk itself and usually that leads to some of the difficult
questions as to how different systems interact with eachother. The questions that come out of this is whereshould be systematized and what is beyond the system;
where might the non-systemic be useful also to thesystems that are currently in use.
There is a tendency to accept as a way forward trying
to work out what can be achieved beyond thestandards of the systems approach to DRR, and thereis the need to think about how to go about achieving it.
The talk start to discuss about learning processes andthe experiential learning and non-experiential learning,that has been writing about in recent years. It also
discussed about some of the barriers there are todeveloping the approach. Ultimately this all have to be
applied. How might one engage with this approachgoing forward. Lot of answers to this is by looking
around at what is already going on in the society. The
societal contributions are there naturally and what weare trying to do is interpret it so that we can remove
barriers to advance forward.

The presentation focused on people centred
approaches to disaster risk reduction and the idea ofsystems analysis and what it means by different types
of approaches using systems and sometimes but nonsystemic aspects as well. People are quite used to theidea of systems being fundamental to ther subject
areas. There are many questions ahead as to whysystems approach has got its limitations.
The lecture starts by looking at metanarratives there
are about systems – there are world systems, and what
is going on really in the subject area in terms of thoseworld systems. It moves more towards looking at the
management implications of the systems or nonsystemic approaches; and and other different types ofsystems and how it interprets them. Then the lecture
shifts beyond towards system-based risk assessment toClick the link towatch the lecture atYouTubehttps://GADRI Annual Report 2020—14

Prof. Gretchen Kalonji, Dean,
Institute for Disaster Management
and Reconstruction(IDMR), Sichuan
University, China
Gretchen Kalonji is an
Americanscientistandacademic administrator. She
is Dean of Sichuan University.
Kalonji was previously theassistant Director-General for Natural Sciences at
UNESCO. She is a graduate of Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT), USA and obtained her
D.Phil. on Materials Science and Engineering.
Lecture title: Innovations in Undergraduate
Education Design of a New Major in “Integrated
Disaster Sciences ad Management” - itaddressed the following items:•••

Why was this topic chosen and how is it related
to the strategic development of our Institute forDisaster Management and Reconstruction(IDMR)?
Comparison of the emerging field of “disastersciences” with the historical evolution of the fieldof “materials science” – lessons and ongoingchallenges; and details of the design for a newundergraduate major in “Integrated Disaster
Sciences and Management”
Prospects for international collaboration in a
research-based, interdisciplinary undergraduate
program

Click on the link to watch the lecture at YouTube https://youtu.be/XMEmZXrbNqM

Prof. John Clammer, O. P. Jindal
Global University, India
John Clammer is a Professor at
Jindal School of Liberal Arts andHumanities. He comes to theuniversity after a long period in Japanas
ProfessorofComparative
Sociology and Asian Studies at
Sophia University and formerly
Director of the Graduate School ofComparative Culture there, and as
Visiting Professor at the United Nations University,
Tokyo. He is a graduate of Oxford University andcompleted his D.Phil. degree there in Social
Anthropology.
Lecture title: Culture, Sustainability and Disaster
Recovery: A Sociological, Architectural andCultural Approach discussed the following issues:•

Linking Natural Disasters, Humanitarian Crises
and Climate Change•

Building a Holistic model of the relationships
between natural disasters (prevention andrecovery), humanitarian crises, climate change
and sustainability.

•

Which means: Deepening Theory and methodology
 Exploring social, cultural and psychologicaldimensions as well as scientific andengineering ones
 Analyzing cases studies for clues for bothpreparedness, short-term recovery and longterm recovery and rehabilitation
Click on the link to watch the lecture at YouTube https://youtu.be/XMEmZXrbNqM

GADRI Annual Report 2020—15

Building Back Better: A Holistic Approach to
Post-Disaster Recovery

By Prof. John Clammer, O. P. Jindal Global
University, India
Brief-Bio of Speaker: http://jslh.edu.in/john-robert-clammer/
Lecture title: Building Back Better: A Holistic
Approach to Post-Disaster Recovery
Abstract: The concept of ‘building back better” iswell known. This lecture was designed to broaden
the idea by incorporating a number of elements thatare not always stressed. Many post-disastersituations have not involved architects in the designof new housing and other structures, but theevidence is that good and sustainable design, often
beyond the capacities of NGOs and government
appointed contractors, results in buildings that are
enjoyed by the users, are well-maintained andprovide psychological satisfaction. This is only true
however when local cultures, social structure andgender norms are also taken into primary account in
the design process. The lecture illustrated this withreference to a number of case studies, and also drewattention to a number of other key factors, including
the rebuilding and/or reimagining of the local
economy (and relating rebuilding to these needs),
local demography, and the well-known significanceof involving the community in all stage of planning,
design and execution. At the same time the lecture
drew attention to the tendency to romanticize theidea of “community” and to not pay sufficientattention to social hierarchies, inequalities and local
power structures. While stressing the importance ofdesign for sustainability (including drawing on
vernacular architecture and architects), thee lecture
also drew parallels between post-disaster and postconflict situations, and suggested that the field oftrauma studies is potentially very important inunderstanding the psychology of post-disasterrecovery. In conclusion, the lecture suggested policy
implications, including the importance of holism(involving architects, anthropologists, ecologists,
engineers, geologists and others) in post-disasterplanning) and the desirability of including disasterprevention and reconstruction in the educational
curriculum, especially in schools of architecture andurban planning.

Artificial Intelligence Based Systems
and Satellite Imagery in Disaster Risk
Reduction (DRR)

for disaster management.

By: Dr. Sudip Roy, IIT, Roorkee, India

has authored one book, one book chapter and two
granted US patents. He has received many awards

Dr. Sudip Roy, Assistant Professor,
Department of Computer Science andEngineering of Indian Institute ofTechnology (IIT) Roorkee, India

and recently being the recipient of the Early Career
Research Award from the Department of Science andTechnology, Govt. of India in 2017.

He has published 19

international peer-reviewed journal papers and 38
international peer-reviewed conference papers. He

Dr. Sudip Roy is currently an Assistant Professor in

the Department of Computer Science and Engineeringof Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Roorkee, India. He is also an associatedfaculty member of the Centre of Excellencein Disaster Mitigation and Management in
IIT Roorkee, India. He received hisbachelor of science degree in Physics andbachelor of technology degree in Computer
Science and Engineering from the Universityof Calcutta, India, in 2001 and 2004,
respectively. In 2009 and 2014, he received
the master of science (by research) and
PhD degrees in Computer Science andEngineering from IIT Kharagpur, India,
respectively. His research interests include
electronic design automation, modelling andsimulation, optimization techniques, and ICTGADRI Annual Report 2020—16

Lecture title: Artificial Intelligence Based
Systems and Satellite Imagery in Disaster Risk
Reduction (DRR)
Abstract: In recent years, many natural disasters are
becoming more dangerous partly due to climatechange, and their far-reaching impacts havenegatively affected people and wildlife across theworld. After a disaster, it is important to prioritize
rescue operations, disaster response and coordinate
relief efforts. These are to be carried out in a fast andefficient manner since resources are often limited indisaster-affected areas, and it is extremely important
to identify the areas of maximum damage. In a post-disaster scenario, government agencies and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) put their efforts
to coordinate among themselves for effective andefficient disaster relief supply. Such kind of disaster
response activities aim to fulfill humanitarian needs as
early as possible.
However, in many developing and under-developed
countries, most of the existing disaster mapping
efforts are manual, which is time-consuming and often
leads to erroneous results. Many times, it has beenfound hard to access the emergency data timely, as
these data are generally fragmented and incomplete.
Hence, the government agencies and NGOs require
turning these data into useful information.
There are several disaster data available with us suchas satellite data, sensor data, social media data,
videos, etc. and with the help of artificial intelligence(AI) based techniques we can manage the activities
related to disaster management more effectively to
reduce the disaster risk and mitigate it. Moreover,satellite imagery and GIS maps can give emergency
and disaster response officials a wealth of information
for assessment, analysis and monitoring of natural
disasters such as hurricanes, tornadoes and cyclone
damage from small to large regions around the globe.

The use of satellite imagery has become increasingly
popular for disaster monitoring and response. Thus, it
is essential to develop a satellite integrated robust
classification system for surveillance of the disasteraffected areas, which can be used in route mapping
for relief supply, fund release, biodiversity planning,damage mapping, and other disaster estimation
purposes.
For example, Figure 2 presents a postdisaster satellite image of an affected region and akind of mapping of damage levels on that satellite
image (Pink: no damage, Blue: major damage), which
may be useful for relief logistics and recovery. In thefirst part of this talk, we discussed on several
applications of AI based systems for effective
management of both natural and human-madedisasters. There are many different future challenges
to explore the capabilities of AI-driven systems in
different
phases(preparedness,
response,prevention/mitigation, and recovery) of the disastermanagement cycle.
It is required to explore how AI based systems forsatellite imagery can be useful for disaster risk
reduction (DRR). In order to identify the areas, whichhave been most severely affected by a disaster, we
explored the use of AI based systems for satellite
imagery. In the last part of this talk, we discussed
about our recent work that was accepted for
publication in a reputed international conference
namely IEEE IGARSS 2020 (IEEE International
Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium 2020).
This framework will help to find the reason behind thewidespread devastation in the remote area and enable
emergency responders to gain lead-time for supplying
emergency relief operations. We combined different
image descriptors and it is able to achieve comparable
results as obtained by the existing state-of-the-art
methods. In addition, the proposed framework attains
better results (in terms of accuracy) compared to the

As disaster sites are generally noteasily accessible, therefore, theuse of satellite imagery has
become a valuable source of
information for assessing theimpact of devastating events. For
example,Figure 1 shows
the preand post-disastersatellite images captured for2013 Haiyan super typhoon in
Philippines.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—17

GADRI Board of Directors
25th February 2020

GADRI Annual Report 2020—18

GADRI Board of Directors
25th February 2020
The 18th meeting of the GADRI Board of
Directors and Advisory Board took place atthe Disaster Prevention Research Institute(DPRI), Kyoto University, Uji Campus,
Kyoto, Japan on 25th February 2020.
Term of office of half of the members of theBoard of Directors will come to an end as of
31st March 2020. The occasion was used to
introduce the new members of the Board
The meeting was attended by the newmembers of the Board who will start theirterm from 1st April 2020 for four years.
•

The meeting was opened by Chair of
the Board requesting all members togive a brief self-introduction. In addition to theBoard members and the Advisory Board

nominate the institutes for the vacant positions
and the second step was the voting of theinstitutes to the GADRI Board of Directors. The
vacant positions were - two vacancies in Europe
and Africa; two vacancies in Asia and Japan; andone vacancy in Americas for USA.
• Appointment of the Chair – the term of officeof the current Chair of the Board was to come toan end as of 31 March 2020. It was proposed toreceive nominations including self-nominations
for the Chair of the Board by e-mail. The GADRISecretariat will follow-up on this in due course.

• 5th Global Summit of GADRI: Preparations
are underway for the 5th Global Summit of
GADRI with the sub-theme on Engaging Science
with Action” in Milan, Italy, in March 2021.
members, the meeting was joined by the newmembers of the Board who would taketheir term of office from 1 April 2020.
•

Minutes of the last meeting - The
minutes of the 17th Meeting of the
GADRI Board of Directors wasreviewed and approved by themembers.
•

Voting Results The Secretary-Generalof
GADRI
sharedinformation on the voting
process that took place between
November 2019 to 1 February 2020 in
two steps.
The first step was to
GADRI Annual Report 2020—19

Members of the GADRI Board of Directors

2020-2024

Name

Term

Institute

Europe and Africa
1Prof. Ortwin Renn

1 April 2018 to 31
March 2022

Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS),
Germany2

Dr. Zita Sebesvari

1 April 2020 to 31
March 2024

United Nations University, Institute for Environmentand Human Security (UNU-EHS), Bonn, Germany

3

Prof. Peter Sammonds 1 April 2020 to 31
Prof. David Alexander March 2024

Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR),
University College London, UK

4Prof. Andrew Collins(Chair of Board)

1 April 2016 to 31
March 2021

Disaster and Development Network (DDN),
Department of Geography, Northumbria University,
UK

Asia and Oceania
5

Prof. Gretchen Kalonji

1 April 2020 to 31
March 2024

IDMR, Sichuan University, Chengdu. China

6

Prof. Toshio Koike

1 April 2020 to 31
March 2024

International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk
Management (ICHARM) under the auspices of
UNESCO, Tsukuba, Japan

7

Prof. Mahua
Mukherjee

1 April 2018 to 31
March 2022

Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India

8

Dr. Indrajit Pal

1 April 2018 to 31
March 2022

DPMM) Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), Bangkok,
ThailandAmericas9Prof. Paul Kovacs

1 April 2018 to 31
March 2022

Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction, Western
University, Canada

10

Prof. Rodrigo
Cienfuegos

1 April 2018 to 31
March 2022

Centro Nacional de Investigacion par la Gestion de
Desastres Naturales (CIGIDEN), Santiago, Chile

11

Prof. John van de Lindt

1 April 2020 to 31
March 2024

Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience
Planning, Colorado State University, USA

Secretary-General

DPRI, Kyoto University, Kyoto, JapanGADRI Secretariat
12

Prof. Hirokazu Tatano

GADRI Annual Report 2020—20

Members of the GADRI Advisory Board

2020-2024

1

Prof. Irasema Alcántara
Institute of Geography, National Autonomous University of Mexico
1 April 2018 to-Ayala(UNAM), Mexico

2

Dr. Walter Amman

3

Prof. Mohsen Ashtiany 1 April 2018 to Iranian Earthquake Engineering Association (IEEA), Iran4

5
6

1 April 2018 to Global Risk Forum (GRF Davos), Switzerland

Dr. Tom de Groeve
Dr. Elisabeth
1 April 2020 toKrausmann
Dr. Stefan Hochrainer1 April 2018 to
StiglerProf. Fumihiko
1 April 2020 to
ImamuraEuropean Commission, Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), Italy

International Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA), Austria
International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS),
Tohoku University, Japan
National Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction(NCDR), Chinese Taipei

7

Prof. Wei-Sen Li

1 April 2018 to

8Prof. Khalid Mosalam

1 April 2018 to

9Prof. Yuichi Ono

10

Prof. Lori Peek

1 April 2020 to Natural Hazard Center (NHC), University of Colorado-Boulder, USA

11

Prof. Charles
Scawthorn

1 April 2018 to

12Prof. Rajib Shaw

1 April 2018 to Graduate School of Media and Governance, Keio University, Japan

13

Prof. Jörgen Sparf

14
15
16
17

Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER),
University of California, Berkeley, USA
International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS),
1 April 2020 to
Tohoku University, Japan
Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER),
University of California, Berkeley, USA

Risk and Crisis Research Centre (RCRC), Mid Sweden University,
SwedenGraduate School of Advanced Integrated Studies (GSAIS) in Human
Prof. Kaoru Takara
01-April 2018
Survivability (Shishu-Kan), Kyoto University, Japan
Dr. Gary Wilson
1 April 2018 to GNS Science, Natural Hazards Group, New Zealand
Ms. Ritsuko YamazakiNational Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster1 April 2020 to
Honda
Resilience (NIED), Japan
Integrated Risk Governance Project (IRG-Project), State Key
Prof. Qian Ye
1 April 2018 to Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology,
Beijing Normal University, China
1 April 2020 toRegional Alliances
December
2020

South Asian Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (SAADRI), IIT,
Roorkee, India

18

Prof. Mahua Mukherjee

19Prof. Andrew Collins(Chair of the Board of
UK Alliance of Disaster Research (UKADR), Disaster and
1 April 2020 to
Directors; and Co-chair
Development Network (DDN), Northumbria University, UK
UKADR)

20

Prof. Paul Kovacs,
Chair

1 April 2018 to

North American Alliance for Hazards and Disaster ResearchInstitutes (NAAHDRI), Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction,

21

Prof. DesmondManatsa, Chair

1 April 2018 toAfrican Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (AADRI), Bindura
University of Science Education, Zimbabwe

22

Prof. Hirokazu Tatano

1 March 2015

GADRI Secretariat, Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI),
Kyoto University, Uji Campus, JapanGADRI Annual Report 2020—21

COVID 19
GADRI Op-Ed on COVID-19

The Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes(GADRI) promotes a collaborative platform forshared knowledge and networking on topics assistingdisaster risk reduction and resilience, whereby
combinations of research groups around the world
become more influential by pulling together.
The current COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates anew
the interconnected and systemic nature of risks andongoing uncertainties affecting all societies in every
part of the world. The GADRI Board of Directors andthe Advisory Board—representing a membership ofover 200 disaster research institutes worldwide—
recognise the challenges for improved science,
policy and practice in our championing of knowledge
and understanding in one of the great challenges of
our times.
To overcome COVID-19 and similar threats going
forward we recognise that the emergence of
pandemic occurs in contexts of complex biophysical,
exposure and capacity influences that predispose todisaster outcomes. Addressing hope in our research
and actions in securing sustainable futures ourchildren wish to experience requires an unending
advance in disaster related specialist knowledge andintegrated and multidisciplinary contributions.
GADRI encourages all it members and theirextensive array of further networks to invest theirefforts to recognise their roles in bringing about
improvements in the way global emergencies, suchas that caused by COVID-19, can be informed byhigh quality knowledge from all regions anddisciplines that are able to contribute. This way wewill answer back to the current global predicament,
including through building up earlier our readinessand capacity to also address the wider array of
hazards and risks and ongoing challenges that
follow.

Towards this end, GADRI is joining with the North
American Alliance of Hazard and Disaster ResearchInstitutes (NAAHDRI) to support the new COVID-19
Global Research Registry for Public Health andSocial Sciences. The Registry is a collaborative
initiative of the CONVERGE facility headquartered at
the Natural Hazards Center at the University ofColorado at Boulder that involves partners fromaround the world. GADRI encourages all regional
alliances of disaster research and their related
networks to proactively share their further
innovations and actions.
The next Global Summit of GADRI is due to takeplace in northern Italy 14th-19th March 2021, leading
to which we will be consolidating an inevitable multiinstitute stimulus to new knowledge and what mustbe achieved going forward. We also intend to run aparticipatory Webinar shortly for member discussions
and debate relating to COVID 19.

Wishing you all well in your many contributions forchampioning the purpose of the Alliance.
On Behalf of GADRI Board of Directors and Advisory
Board.

Prof. Hirokazu Tatano, Secretary-General, GADRI
Prof. Andrew Collins, Chair, GADRI Board of
Directors

GADRI Annual Report 2020—22

Op-Ed: COVID-19 – Lessons from
Disaster Research
Decades of disaster research provide importantlessons that will help us through the COVID-19
pandemic.
Speaking as one, the leaders andmembers of the Global Alliance of Disaster ResearchInstitutes, the North American Alliance of Hazards andDisaster Research Institutes, United Kingdom Alliancefor Disaster Research and the Africa Alliance forDisaster Research Institutions know that:First, this global pandemic has been widely anticipatedand foretold. Experts over many years forecast apandemic with scale of illness, swiftness of spread,scarcity of critical medical resources and profound
impact on society such as we are now experiencing.
Current response efforts and decision-making are
benefiting from previous pandemic and disaster
research. Disaster research provides an essential
science foundation for effective decision making
before, during and after a crisis strikes.
Second, much of this knowledge did not translate into
adequate preparedness. This is part of a larger
phenomenon that experts have identified as “planningfor the last disaster.” We often invest in getting readyfor the last disaster with a fading sense of urgency astime passes. Stockpiling of resources and redundancy
in capacity is seen as wasteful and is eliminated rather
than being recognized as preparedness for inevitable
extreme weather, geophysical, epidemic or otherhazards. Discounting future impacts over current
circumstances may be characteristically human, but
this myopia based on short-term, political or economic
benefits is particularly common among persons andentities making decisions in the public-political arena
who, moreover, don’t bear the brunt of their decisions.
We know from past studies that actions taken inadvance to prepare for known risks consistently resultin avoided losses many times greater than the cost.

Third, failure to prepare most impacts those who are
marginalized and disenfranchised—the poor, the sick,minorities, immigrants, refugees, the uninsured andchildren. For nations where
social safety nets arefrayed or nonexistent, residents
will depend on financial
supportandrescue packages from theirgovernment.
Without coping and recovery mechanisms, resort is toreactive ad-hoc emergency spending rather thaninvestments in community resilience that would avoid
hardship in the first place.
Fourth, abiding by core principles of risk
communication can save lives. Decades of research
have established best practices for effective
communications in a disaster. These include
messages tailored to specific audiences from trusted
sources on what to do and how to do it, especially formore vulnerable groups less likely to receive
information through traditional channels. Many of thesecore principles are currently being violated. This muststop, as lives are being lost. We need to have effective
risk communication.
Fifth, transparency, situational awareness andrecovery planning are essential. Only when we truly
understand the risk and most effective responses can
we all contribute to the solution. Many fields of science
rely on global and open exchange of data. A continuing
stream of ambiguous and incomplete messages
erodes public confidence and the ability to effectively
manage the disaster. While the current priority is rightly
focused on preventing the spread of COVID-19,
responding to the needs of those infected andaddressing the severe economic dislocations, it is also
important to begin planning for recovery. As early as
possible, a longer-term vision of the impact, recovery
planning and endgame are needed so that people andbusinesses can plan, act and recover.
Sixth, extreme events evoke remarkable acts ofaltruism but also can bring about a disturbing lack ofhumanity. It is important to celebrate positive actions,
including mutual support for friends and strangers in
need. It is just as crucial that we remain watchful forabuse and wrongdoing at all levels of society andtake action to confront inappropriate behaviour.
Lastly, as our global community struggles with the
pandemic, we must also continue to be prepared forflooding, wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes and othernatural hazards, and not lose sight of the long-term
issue of climate change. Moreover, COVID-19
requires that we adapt some established emergency
management practices, like planning for emergency
evacuation shelters.
Sound science is essential to good decisions.
Disaster research finds that those who embrace
evidence-based
preparedness
in
their
risk

GADRI Annual Report 2020—23

Op-Ed was Written By: GADRI Secretary-General, Members of the GADRIBoard of Directors, GADRI Advisory Board, and other members of GADRI•

Hirokazu Tatano, DPRI, Kyoto University,
Japan

•

Charles Scawthorn, University of California,
Berkeley, USA•

StefanHochrainer-Stigler,International
Institute for Applied System Analysis (IIASA),
Austria•

Qian Ye, Earth Surface Processes andResource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal
University, China•

Khalid Mosalam,Berkeley, USA•

Wei-Sen Li, National Science and Technology
Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR),
Chinese Taipei•

Lori Peek, Colorado University, Boulder CO,
USA•

Paul Kovacs, University of Western Ontario,
Canada•Andrew Collins, Northumbria University, U.K.

•

Gretchen Kalonji, Sichuan University, China•

Manabu Hashimoto, DPRI, Kyoto University,
Japan

•

Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany, Iranian Earthquake
Engineering Association (IEEA), Iran•

Renn Ortwin, Institue for Advances Studies(IASS), Germany•

Jörgen Sparf, Mid Sweden University, Sweden•

Walter Ammann, lobal Risk Forum (GRF
Davos), Switzerland•

Kaoru Takara, Graduate School of Advanced
Integrated Studies in Human Survivability(Shishu-kan), Kyoto University, Japan•

Gary Wilson, GNS Science - Te Pu Ao, New
Zealand•

Desmond Manatsa, Bindura University of
Science Education, Zimbabwe•

Tom de Groeve, European Commission, Joint
Research Centre (JRC), Italy•

Rajib Shaw, Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC),
Keio University, Japan•

IrasemaAlcántara-Ayala,InstituteofGeography, National Autonomous University of
Mexico (UNAM), Mexico•

David Eisenman, University of California, Los
Angeles, USA•

Melanie Gall, Arizona State University, USA•

Karl Kim, University of Hawaii, USA•

Jamie Kruse, East Carolina University, USA•

Selwyn Mahon, American University of the
Caribbean School of Medicine, St Maarten•

Rich Olson, Florida
University, USA•

Jean-Paul Pinelli,
Florida Tech, USA••

Zita Sebesvari, Institute for Environment andHuman Security, United Nations University,
GermanyPeter Sammonds, Institute for Risk andDisaster Reduction (IRDR), University College
London, UK•

David Alexander, Institute for Risk andDisaster Reduction (IRDR), University College
London, UK•

John van de Lindt, Colorado State University,
USA•

Toshio Koike, Public Works Research Institute(PWRI), International Centre for Water Hazard
and Risk Management (ICHARM) under the
auspices of UNESCO, Japan

•
•
•

•

•

Mahua Mukherjee, Indian
Technology (IIT) Roorkee, India

InstituteofIndrajit Pal, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT),
ThailandRodrigo Cienfuegos, Centro Nacional deInvestigacion par la Gestion de Desastres
Naturales (CIGIDEN), Santiago, Chile
Fumihiko Imamura, International ResearchInstitute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku
University, Japan
Yuichi Ono, International Research Institute ofDisaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University,
Japan

GADRI Annual Report 2020—24

UniversityofCalifornia,

International

Keeping in touchwith members

GADRI Annual Report 2020—25

Keeping in touchwith members

GADRI Annual Report 2020—26

Americas

GADRI Annual Report 2020—27

Americas

GADRI Annual Report 2020—28

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Americas—Members
Argentina
BrazilEnvironment and Natural Resources Research Program (PIRNA), Instituto de Geografía“Romualdo Ardissone”, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires
Department of Civil Engineering, Centre for Technology and Natural Resources, Federal
University of Campina Grande

BrazilUniversidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS)

CanadaThe Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction (ICLR), Western University

Chile

Centro Nacional de Investigacion par la Gestion de Desastres Naturales (CIGIDEN)

Colombia Department of Chemical Engineering, Universidad de los Andes
Colombia

National Unit for Disaster Risk Management in Colombia (NGRD)(Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres de Colombia-UNGRD)

Colombia

Seismological and Geophysical Observatory of the Southwest (Observatorio Sismológico yGeofísico del Suroccidente (OSSO)), Valle University (Universidad del Valle)

Ecuador

Pacific International Center for Disaster Risk Reduction (PIC-DRR), Escuela Superior
Politechnica del Litoral

MexicoInstitute of Geography, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)

MexicoStructures Laboratory, University of Michoacan

MexicoResearch Institute of Risk Management, University of Michoacan

USA

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

USA

Center for Emergency Management and Homeland Security, Arizona State University (ASU)

USA

Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER), University of California, Berkeley

USA

Resilient Communities Research Institute (RCRI), College of Architecture and Environmental
Design, California Polytechnic State University

USA

Natural Hazards Center (NHC), University of Colorado Boulder

USA

Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning, Colorado State University

USA

Disaster Research Center, University of Delaware

USA

Wind and Hurricane Impact Research Laboratory (WHIRL), Florida Institute of Technology (FIT)USA

Center for Wind Hazard and Infrastructure Performance, Texas Tech

USA

Dept. of Business Information Technology, Virginia Tech

USA

Program on Population Impact, Recovery and Resilience (PiR2), College of Global Public Health,
New York University

USA

Nevada Seismological Laboratory, University of Nevada

USA

Global Resilience Institute, Northeastern University

USA

Coastal Resilience Center (CRC), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)

USA

Advanced Radar Research Center, University of Oklahoma

USA

Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment (CITE), Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute (RPI)USA

Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

USA

Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC)

USA

Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE), University of Southern
California

USA

Hazard Reduction and Recovery Center (HRRC), Texas A&M University (TAMU)

USA

Geologic Hazards Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey

USA

Department of Environmental Studies, Resilience Institute, Western Washington University

GADRI Annual Report 2020—29

Federal University of Campina Grande（UFCG),
Brazilhttps://portal.ufcg.edu.br/

2020 was marked by the outbreak of theCovid-19 pandemics. As well known,
Brazilian federal government has taken
an irresponsible approach to deal withthis major disaster. Therefore, statesand municipal governments, public andprivate health services, as well asorganisations of the civil society,universities and research institutes took
the lead to convey the best
management of the crisis and support tothe population to deal with the disaster.

The Federal University of Campina
Grande (UFCG) conducts studies,
researchandinterventiononenvironmental disasters in a broad
sense, spanning several areas. This ispartly motivated by the institution’s
location in the semiarid region of Brazil,
high populated and socially andeconomicallyvulnerable
toenvironmental
hazards,suchasdroughts,
desertification,
landdegradation,
flash
floods,healthvulnerability, leading to social inequality.
Our
present
interests
areonunderstanding local and regional needs
and the social aspects of Disaster Risk
Reduction (DRR).

UFCG prompted its infrastructure and personal tobe part of this collective front. The university
hospital, laboratories and research groups
adapted their facilities to support studies, produce
materials and products to combat the pandemics.
This included, in the early months of the year,
manufacturing of protective equipment for healthworkers and other front-line personnel, adapting
epidemiologicalmonitoring
systemsandsimulation models, training public agents to deal
with the new disaster context.

Later, UFCG funded new initiatives to mitigate
and manage the pandemic risk. Dozens of suchinitiatives were executed during 2020, mostly inthe areas of Health, Biosecurity, Psychology,
Mental Health, Education, Social Protection,
Environment, Sanitation, Housing, Agriculture,
Food and Nutrition, Human Rights, Information
Technology, and Data Science. Many of theseprojects were implemented in cooperation andcoordination with other Brazilian and international
institutes and organisations.

Social media and online communication platforms
were extensively used to support knowledgetransfer and dissemination, as well as for
improvingscientificandtechnologicalcooperation. UFCG’s online learning systems
were extended and adapted to better support
remote education, research, and development.

Prof. Carlos de Oliveira Galvao
E-mail: carlos.galvao@ufcg.edu.br

GADRI Annual Report 2020—30

Information on healthy sanitation and housing, targeted to vulnerable settlements for preventing Covid-19 contagion.

Monitor-ing, modelling and projecting Covid-19 related cases and deaths.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—31

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Centro de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada delRiesgo de Desastres (CIGIDEN), Chile
https://www.cigiden.cl/en/home/

CIGIDEN highlights a few of the activities
undertaken during 2020:

Commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the1960 earthquake and tsunami in Chile.
CIGIDEN was involved in a series of tsunami talks
for children, a scientific tour of the 1960
earthquake and tsunami, a virtual meeting withcitizens, the premiere of a short documentaryand interventions by experts in social networks
and media. This agenda was set up incollaboration with the NGO “Proyecta Memoria”
to promote discussions, awareness, and theremembrance of the largest measured megaearthquake in history. This earthquake and its
ensuing tsunami devastated nearly 40 cities andhundreds of settlements in central-southern
Chile, changing forever the morphology of theChilean coast and the seismic/tsunami scienceof the world.
CIGIDEN and “Espacio Público” document withproposals of actions to deal with the Covid19 crisis and to reinforce preparedness andawareness as the lock down measures werelifted. The report "Thinking about the pandemic
with a new approach: 6 Proposals for Disaster•
Risk Management as a Framework for
Pandemic Action and Recovery", proposes
working with local communities and their needs,
generating reports from the municipalities to
identify sources of new infections. In addition,
restructuring the risk communication strategy •and enhancing the role of science in the
management of the pandemic.

monitoring of volcanoes and the role of local
knowledge in dealing with emergencies, among
other topics. An average of 150 people
connected to each webinar, from Mexico, Brazil,
Costa Rica, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru,
Ecuador, Argentina, Salvador, Bolivia, anddifferent regions of Chile have participated in
the meetings.

International webinar on the Challenges ofGovernance for Coastal Zones in Chile. The
meeting, which was attended by national andinternational
guests,discussed
topicsassociated with integrated coastal zone
management, its regulations and institutionalframework, the importance of local participationand the organized society in coastalmanagement, the relevance of coastal scienceand the ancestral use of the coast. It wasorganized by the Coastal Observatory together
with the Center for Integrated Disaster Risk
Management CIGIDEN.

Policy paper series 2020. This year CIGIDEN
launched 3 new scientific and policy documents:
Designing Emergency Information: Experiences inManaging Risk and Educating Resilience; Citizen
Participation in Risk Management Policies in Latin
America: Recommendations for the Chilean caseandWhy Chile Needs a Coastal Law. Towards a New
Coastal Governance for the 21st Century

CIGIDEN Talks on Governance of Disaster Risk
Management in the Context of Multi Hazards.
In July 2020, the center began a series of talks
with national and international guests to discussrisk governance, the challenges posed by new
risks, the management of coastal areas, satellite

Dr. Rodrigo Cienfuegos
Director
E-mail: director@cigiden.cl

GADRI Annual Report 2020—32

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Various publications of CIGIDEN:

The report Proposals for Disaster Risk
Management as a Framework for
Pandemic Action and Recovery

Fieldwork CIGIDEN – UCN on
Volcano Risk Management

There are more than 300 articles in the press,
TV, radio and online media, from ourresearchers talking about natural hazards anddisaster risk management.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—33

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Natural Hazards Center, University ofColorado, Boulder, USA
https://hazards.colorado.edu/
https://converge.colorado.edu/

The Natural Hazards Center at the University ofColorado Boulder serves as the U.S. National
ScienceFoundation-designatedinformation
clearinghouse for the societal dimensions ofhazards and disasters. The mission of the Center
is to:• Translate and share hazards and disaster
research and information;• Build connections between researchers,
nonprofit and private sector professionals, themedia, policy makers, and local, state, andfederal officials;• Advance social science and interdisciplinary
knowledge, with a special emphasis on themost vulnerable populations and places; and• Train and mentor a diverse next generation of
hazards and disaster professionals.
• The team at the Natural Hazards Center led
several initiatives during the reporting period
including:• Served as the Secretariat for the North
American Alliance of Hazards and Disaster
Research
Institutes(NAAHDRI).
https://
naahdri.org/• Maintained a global map and list of universitybased hazards and disaster research centersand published the data associated with the map
and list. See: https://hazards.colorado.edu/
resources/research-centers• Co-facilitated the annual Researchers Meeting,which involved over 450 hazards and disaster
researchers from across the U.S. and aroundthe world. The theme of the 2020 Researchers
Meeting was “The Data Revolution: EthicalImperatives and Methodological Considerationsfor Hazards and Disaster Research.” https://hazards.colorado.edu/workshop/2020/
researchers-meeting/overview• Hosted the monthly Making Mitigation Work
webinar series. https://hazards.colorado.edu/
training/webinars/making-mitigation-work• Publishing the Research Counts series https://hazards.colorado.edu/news/research-counts aswell as a special collection of the publication
focused specifically on Mass Sheltering andDisasters. https://hazards.colorado.edu/news/
research-counts/special-collection/masssheltering• Publishing Disaster Research—News You Can
Use.
https://hazards.colorado.edu/disasterresearch/current• Hosting the Disaster Grads listserve forundergraduate and graduate students in thehazards
anddisasterfield.
https://
hazards.colorado.edu/signup.

• Hosted the 45th annual Natural Hazards
Research and Applications Workshop, which
involved over 850 researchers, local/state/federal practitioners, policymakers, private andnon-profit sector representatives, journalists,and students. The theme of the 2020 Workshop
was “Active Hoe in an Era of Environmental
Extremes.”
https://hazards.colorado.edu/
workshop/2020

Prof. Lori Peek
Director
E-mail: Lori.Peek@colorado.edu

GADRI Annual Report 2020—34

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Researchers affiliated with the Natural Hazards Centerand their CONVERGE facility produced the following
journal article publications in 2020.
2020

Adams, Rachel M., Candace Evans, Mason
Mathews, Amy Wolkin, and Lori Peek.
“Mortality by Forces of Nature among Older
Adults by Race/Ethnicity and Gender.”JournalofAppliedGerontology,
10.1177/0733464820954676.

2020

Peek, Lori, Heather Champeau, Jessica
Austin, Mason Mathews, and Haorui Wu.
“What Methods Do Social Scientists Use to
Study Disasters? An Analysis of the Social
Science
ExtremeEventsResearch(SSEER) Network.” American Behavioral
Scientist 64(8): 1066-1094.

2020

Peek, Lori, Jennifer Tobin, Rachel Adams,
Haorui Wu, and Mason Mathews. “A
Framework for Convergence Research in
the Hazards and Disaster Field: The Natural
Hazards
Engineering
Research
Infrastructure
CONVERGE
Facility.”
Frontiers in Built Environment, https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/
fbuil.2020.00110/full.

2020

van de Lindt, John, Walter Gillis Peacock,
JudithMitrani-Reiser,
Nathanael
Rosenheim, Derya Deniz, Maria Dillard, Tori
Tomiczek,
Maria
Koliou,Andrew
Graettinger, Shane Crawford, Kenneth
Harrison, Andre Barbosa, Jennifer Tobin,
Jennifer Helgeson, Lori Peek, Mehrdad
Memari, Elaina Sutley, Sara Hamideh,
Donghwan Gu, Stephen Cauffman, andJuan Fung. “Community Resilience-Focused
Technical Investigation of the 2016
Lumberton, North Carolina Flood: An
Interdisciplinary Approach.” Natural Hazards
Review,https://ascelibrary.org/doi/
pdf/10.1061/(ASCE)NH.15276996.0000387.

2020

Hines, Emmanuelle, Mason Mathews, andLori Peek. “Global List and Interactive Web
Map of University-Based Hazards andDisaster Research Centers.” Natural
Hazards
Review
21(2),
https://
doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)NH.15276996.0000371.

For
more
information,
visit:
hazards.colorado.edu/
andconverge.colorado.edu/.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—35

https://
https://GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Center for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning
Colorado State University, USA
http://resilience.colostate.edu
The year 2020 was a little challenging for the Center
for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning due
to COVID 19, however there were still a large
number of accomplishments throughout the year.

Publication

The Center’s Lumberton Wave 1 report was
published and has thousands of downloads. In early
October 2016, Hurricane Matthew crossed North
Carolina as a Category 1 storm, with some areas
receiving 0.38–0.46 m (15–18 in.) of rainfall on
already saturated soil. The NIST-funded Center for
Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning teamedwith researchers from NIST’s Engineering Laboratory(Disaster and Failure Studies Program, Community
Resilience Group, and the Applied Economics Office)to conduct a field study focused on the impacts of the
Lumber River flooding in Lumberton, North Carolina.
Lumberton is a racially and ethnically diverse
community with higher than average poverty andunemployment rates, a typical civil infrastructure for acity of 22,000 residents, and a city council form ofgovernment. The field data described in this paper
are from the first wave in an ongoing longitudinal
research project documenting the impacts andsubsequent recovery processes following the 2016
riverine flooding in Lumberton. The initial datacollection for this longitudinal community resiliencefocused field study had two major objectives:(1) document initial conditions after the flood for thelongitudinal study of Lumberton’s recovery, with afocus on improving flood-damage and populationdislocation
models;and(2)developamultidisciplinary protocol providing a quantitative
linkage between engineering-based flood damage
assessments and social science-based householdinterviews that capture socioeconomic conditions(e.g., social vulnerabilities related to race, ethnicity,
income, tenancy status, and education levels). This
type of interdisciplinary longitudinal research is
critical to better understand community processes in
the face of disasters and ultimately provide data andinform best practices for enhancing resilience tonatural hazards in US communities. This paper
describes the development and implementation ofthis interdisciplinary effort and offers an example ofcombining an engineering assessment of flood

damage to residential structures and social science
data to model household dislocation. Dislocation
probabilities were primarily driven by flooding
damage but also varied significantly among
Lumberton’s racial/ethnic populations and by tenure.
The NIST-funded Center for Risk-Based Community
Resilience Planning teamed with researchers from
NIST’s Engineering Laboratory (Disaster and Failure
Studies Program, Community Resilience Group, and
the Applied Economics Office) to conduct a fieldstudy focused on the impacts of the Lumber Riverflooding in Lumberton, North Carolina. This paper isadapted from the final NIST report.
https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)NH.15276996.0000387

Center of Excellence Renewal

The National Institute of Standards andTechnology has
reneweda$20
millionpartnership for a Colorado State University
engineering center designed to improve community
resilience planning for natural hazards. The
funding will extend the center of excellence’s work
for another five years, allowing its researchers toapply the modeling system they’ve developed toactual communities. Over the last five years, thecenter has supported the implementation of the NIST
Community Resilience Planning Guide, released in2015, which provides planning guidance tocommunities as they consider pre- and post-event
actions and investments to prevent future hazards
from inflicting devastating consequences. The NIST
guide focuses on buildings and infrastructure
systems and addresses how to maintain social andeconomic functions. Work at the center will continue
to support this sustained resilience effort at NIST.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—36

Prof. John W. van de Lindt
Co-Director
E-mail: jwv@colostate.edu

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

The primary goal of the Center of Excellence in Years 6– 10 is to advance community resiliencemeasurement science by creating a decision support
system that facilitates community planning and theadoption of best practices that promote community
resilience. This decision support system will beembeddedin a state-of-the-art computational environment(IN_CORE) that integrates physics-based modeling ofbuildings and other infrastructure, networks fortransportation, energy, water, and communication
exposedto a spectrum of hazards and hazard intensities,
models of socio-economic networks, and resiliencebased
performance criteria and metrics.
The center's multi-disciplinary team includes experts inengineering, economics, data and computing, andsocial sciences extending across from 13 collaborating
institutions.
objective is thatcomprehensive
fully-The Center’s long term
after 10 years, theintegrated

modeling environment would be a cornerstone ofcommunity resiliency research and planning in the
United States and will be recognized and usedthroughout the US and internationally for its
capabilities. Nationwide user workshops, webinars,
seminars, and other viable means of dissemination incoordination with NIST researchers, industry sector
leaders, and other personnel) will be ongoing. The
environment will be able to optimize resiliency solutions
intelligently at multiple scales and resolutions based onuser needs and imposed constraints. There will be
active engagement between Center personnel andresearchers and planners worldwide. The opensource
environment will be used to calibrate new risk-informed
codes and standards that allow communities to meettheir resiliency goals. The data cloud will be the key
source andcomprehensive repository for all data related tocommunity resiliency planning and recovery in the
United States and will be viewed internationally as thestandard against which multi-national

resiliency research, planning and execution will bemeasured.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—37

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Virtual semi-annual meeting
The Center held both the spring and fall 2020 semiannual meetings virtually. We had over 95 participantsat the Fall 2020 meeting which was held two half days,
November 5-6, 2020.
The presentation material
ranged from Updates within the Center, IN-CORE Web
Interfacing and Community Engagement, Testbeds,
Notebooks and User Communities, Complex System
Modeling, Interdependencies, Uncertainties, Scalability
and Resolution, and Decision Support for Community
Mitigation and Recovery Planning.

Expanded EAP (External Assessment Panel) Members
The Center has been guided in its efforts by anExternal Assessment Panel (EAP), consisting ofapproximately one dozen subject matter and policy
experts in the areas of the built environment, social andeconomic
institutions
andnaturalhazardmitigation. The EAP has attended the 1 1/2 – day semi-annual Center meetings, reviewed the semi-annual
reports on accomplishments prepared by the Center
Leadership (Co-Directors and Task Leads), andconveyed their impressions and recommendations toCenter leadership and NIST technical and managerial
staff. In an effort for the CoE leadership to continue torely on the EAP for strategic advice during Years 6 –10, and reconstituting its membership to reflect the shift
in emphasis during Years 6 – 10 toward
implementation of IN-CORE as a practical open source
community resilience decision platform, we havebroadened our EAP members. Please join us inwelcoming 8 new EAP members to the NIST Center of
Excellence.
Jeffrey Czajkowski
Director of the Center for Insurance Policy andResearch (CIPR) for the National Association of
Insurance Commissioners (NAIC)

Royce Francis
Dr. Royce Francis leads the SEED research groupStrategic [urban] Ecologies, Engineering, and Decisionmaking

Scott Miles
Dr. Scott Miles is an expert on disaster risk reduction,community resilience, disaster recovery, simulation
modeling, and human centered design.

James Newman
James (Jay) Newman is a Public Sector Specialist,
specializing in disaster and climate resilience, at theWorld Bank Group (WBG).

Brenda Phillips
Brenda Philips is a Research Professor and CoDirector of CASA, the center for Collaborative Adaptive
Sensing of the Atmosphere at UMass-Amherst, which
was originally funded as an NSF engineering research
center between 2003-2013.

David Rosowsky
David Rosowsky served for six years as Senior Vice
President and Provost of the University of Vermont(2013-2019).

Rae Zimmerman
Rae Zimmerman is currently Research Professor andProfessor Emerita of Planning and Public
Administration at New York University's Wagner
Graduate School of Public Service, following her
previous full-time position as Professor of Planning andPublic Administration at NYU-Wagner.

Nancy Wilkins-Diehr
Former Associate Director, San Diego Supercomputer
Center, retired

GADRI Annual Report 2020—38

GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Advanced Radar Research Center (ARRC)
University of Oklahoma, USA
https://arrc.ou.edu

three-year annual stipend, opportunities forinternational
researchandprofessional
development, and the freedom to conduct their own
research at any accredited U.S. institution.
4. ARRC students and faculty also received a numberof awards within the university.

1. The ARRC’s research expenditures were morethan $10M in FY2020 with funding from NSF,
NOAA, NASA, DARPA, ONR, AFRL, private
industry, and others.
2. ARRC host the second Industry and Government
Days in February 2020. More than 90 participantsfrom both industry and government agencies joined
this event.
3. ARRC faculty and students have received anumber of national and international recognition
and awards.
•

Prof. Justin Metcalf at ARRC and the School ofElectrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) was
elected to IEEE AES Society's Radar Systems
Panel (RSP). Selection to the panel shows
recognition from the IEEE radar community forsustained contributions and support of IEEE radar
activities.

•

Prof. Justin Metcalf at ARRC and ECE has received
a Young Faculty Award from the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), an
agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.

•

ARRC/ECE
undergraduate
student,
Shane
Flandermeyer, was selected for special recognitionat the recently held AFRL Beyond 5G Software
Defined Radio University Challenge Showcase.

•Prof. Guifu Zhang at ARRC and SoM has received
the Sam. K. Viersen Presidential Professorship.

•

ARRC/ECE PhD student, Arturo Umeyama,received the 2020 WeatherNews Scholarship.

•

ARRC/ECE PhD students, Andrew Byrd, Rodrigo
Lebron Garcia, and Javier Ortiz, Brian Sun, David
Schvartzman, and Arturo Umeyama, received theGallogly College of Engineering Dissertation of
Excellence Awards.

•

ARRC/ECE undergraduate researcher Nicole
Palmer was awarded an Undergraduate Research
Opportunities Program (UROP) grant from OU’s
Honors College.

•

ARRC/SoM graduate student Noah Brauer received
the School of Meteorology Outstanding Teaching
Assistant Award.

•

ARRC/ECE PhD student Andrew Byrd was named
the recipient of the Tommy C. Craighead Award forBest Paper in Radar Meteorology.

5. A $7.4 million grant awarded from the United States
Office of Naval Research to the ARRC will fund thedevelopment of a scanner and innovative digitalradar solutions to support research, prototyping andtesting of advanced digital radar concepts for the
Navy and the U.S. Department of Defense. A
rendering picture of a mobile S-band all-digitalpolarimetric radar developed at the ARRC is shownin the figure. The project will also make OU hometo the largest university-based scanner for nearfield measurements in thenation.

•Morgan Schneider,
an
ARRC
and
School of Meteorology(SoM)
MS
student, was selected therecipient of a
National
ScienceFoundation Graduate
Research Fellowship. Fellows share in the prestige
and opportunities of being selected, including a
GADRI Annual Report 2020—39

Prof. Tian-you Yu
Director of Operations
E-mail: tyu@ou.edu

GADRI Annual Report — Americas
GADRI Annual Report — Americas

Rensselaer Politechnic Institute, USA
https://www.rpi.edu/

The institute continued its work on the two research
grants it received as follows:

EAGER: Operations and Systems Engineering
Extreme Events Research (OSEER)This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research(EAGER) award will support the establishment of a
network of operations researchers and a science plan
to address cross-cutting methodological challenges inhazards and disaster research. An abiding challenge
for decision making in the context of hazards anddisasters derives from the need to provide prescriptive(decisional) guidance under dynamic conditions ofsometimes profound uncertainty and risk. Addressingthese challenge requires a renewed focus on identifying
potentially high-impact research problems that lie
beyond the boundary of existing disciplinary andinterdisciplinary methods to address. This is particularly
true for problems that involve large-scale, sometimes
sustained interaction between human-machine systems
and hazard-related phenomena within a broader policy
and social context.
This project will establish the Operations and Systems
Engineering Extreme Event Research (OSEEER)
network, designed to marshal both traditional and nontraditional sources of expertise in order to accomplish
three main objectives.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has
been deemed worthy of support through evaluation
using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader
impacts review criteria.
https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?
AWD_ID=1936967

includes densely-packed, highly centralized physicalwork spaces, while in the latter this includes adaptive
use of decentralized physical work spaces (such asprivate homes) or virtual ones (as for online learning).
The prospect of co-occurrence of natural hazards (suchas hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes) during the
COVID-19 regime is likely to strain and possibly
confound ongoing and future response efforts.
Accordingly, this EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory
Research (EAGER) will explore the role of engineered
structures and services within the built environment inorder to improve efforts to prevent pandemic joint
hazards from becoming societal disasters. This will
require basic research in exploring new theories,
methods, data and technologies for supporting
mitigation, together with collaborations with multiple
organizations, including the NSF-supported Natural
Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure and its
components(https://www.DesignSafe-ci.org).
This
project will contribute to NSF's role in the National
Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) andthe National Windstorm Impact Reduction Program(NWIRP).
This project will develop and disseminate a researchframework and corresponding research agenda tosupport improved understanding of the role of the built
environment in mitigating or amplifying risks associatedwith pandemic joint hazards.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has
been deemed worthy of support through evaluation
using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader
impacts review criteria.

https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?
AWD_ID=2041666&HistoricalAwards=false

EAGER: Joint Hazard Mitigation in the Era of COVID-19: Implications for Engineered Structures andServices

Much emphasis during the response to the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic has rightly been on traditional
public health efforts at controlling it; however, lessprominent but no less vital is the role of the built
environment itself in both amplifying and suppressing
the effects of COVID-19. In the former case, thisGADRI Annual Report 2020—40

Prof. David Mendonca
Principal Investigator
E-mail: mendod@rpi.edu

GADRI Annual Report — Americas
GADRI Annual Report — Americas

GADRI Annual Report 2020—41

Asia

Japan and Oceania

GADRI Annual Report 2020—42

Asia

Japan and Oceania

GADRI Annual Report 2020—43

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Asia — Members
Bangladesh

Institute of Water and Flood Management (IWFM), Bangladesh University of Engineeringand Technology (BUET)

Bangladesh

Department of Disaster Science and Management (DSM), Faculty of Earth andEnvironmental Sciences, University of Dhaka

China

Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEP), Beijing Institute ofTechnology (BIT)

China

Integrated Risk Governance Project (IRG-Project), State Key Lab of Earth Surface
Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University

China

School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Chang'an University

China

Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ITPCAS)

China

Beijing National Earth Observatory, China Earthquake Administration (CEA)

China

State Key Laboratory of Geo-hazards Prevention and Geo-environment Protection(SKLGP), Chengdu University of Technology

China

Key Laboratory of Coastal Disaster and Defence (KLCDD), Hohai University

China

Natural Disaster Research Institute, Northeast Normal University

China

College of Engineering, Ocean University of China

China

College of Architecture and Environment, Sichuan University (SCU)

China

Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction (IDMR), Sichuan University

China

State Key Laboratory of Hydraulics and Mountain River Engineering (SKLH), Sichuan
University

China

Shanghai Institute of Disaster Prevention and Relief, Tongji University

China

China Research Center for Emergency Management (CCEM), Wuhan University ofTechnology

Hong Kong, Hong Kong Academy of Medicine, Hong Kong Jockey Club, Disaster Preparedness and
China
Response Institute (HKJCDPRI)
India

Centurion University of Technology and Management (CUTM)

India

Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi

India

Disaster Mitigation and Management Centre (DMMC), Uttarakhand Secretariat

India

Humanities and Social Sciences Department, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB)

India

Research & Development, Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITG)

India

Center of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation & Management, Indian Institute of Technology
Roorkee (IITR)

India

Jindal School of Liberal Arts and Humanities, O.P. Jindal Global University

India

School of Ecology and Environment Studies, Nalanda University

India

School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), Delhi

GADRI Annual Report 2020—44

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Indonesia Brawijaya University
Indonesia Gadjah Mada University, Faculty of Engineering
Indonesia

Geological Agency (GA), Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of the Republic ofIndonesia

Indonesia JASA TIRTA I Public Corporation
Indonesia Research Center for Disaster Mitigation, Institut Teknologi Bandung (ITB)
IranInternational Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES)

IranSoil Conservation and Watershed Management Research Institute (SCWMRI), Agricultural
Research, Education and Extension Organization

Iran

Department of Environmental Science, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran

IsraelInstitute of Earth Sciences, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ)

IsraelNational Knowledge and Research Center for Emergency Readiness, University of Haifa

Korea

International Water Resources Research Institute, Chungnam National University

Korea

Department of Disaster Prevention & Safety Engineering, Kangwon National University

Korea

Seoul National University

Korea

School of Urban & Environmental Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science andTechnology

Lao PDR Asia Research Center, National University of Laos (ARC-NUOL)
Lao PDR

Disaster Risk Reduction Division, Department of Climate Change (DCC), Ministry of Natural
Resource and Environment

Malaysia Institute for Environment and Development (LESTARI), University of Kebangsaan Malaysia
Malaysia

Center for Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention Research Initiative (SEADPRI-UKM),
Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM)

Malaysia Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM)
Malaysia Universiti Tenaga National (UNITEN)
Malaysia Centre for Coastal and Ocean Engineering (COEI), Universiti Technologi Malaysia (UTM)
Malaysia

Centre for Environmental Sustainability and Water Security (IPASA), Research Institute for
Sustainable Environment, Universiti Technologi Malaysia (UTM)

Malaysia

Malaysia Japan International Institute of Technology (MJIIT), Universiti Technologi Malaysia(UTM)

Malaysia Disaster Management Institute (DMI), Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM)
Myanmar Emergency Operations Centre, Department of Disaster Management
Nepal

International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)

Nepal

Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University

Oman

German University of Technology in Oman (GUTech)GADRI Annual Report 2020—45

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Philippines PEMSEA Resource Facility, Partnerships in Environmental Management for Seas of East Asia
Philippines R&D, Graduate School, Philippine School of Business Administration
Philippines

National Hydraulic Research Center, National Engineering Center, University of the Philippines,
Diliman Campus

Philippines University of the Philippines Resilience Centre (UPRI)
Philippines Philippine Society of Emergency Medical Technicians
Sri Lanka

Central Engineering Consultancy Bureau (CECB)

Sri Lanka

Center for Urban Water (CUrW)

Sri Lanka

National Building Research Organisation (NBRO)

Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT)

ChineseTaipeiNational Center for Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE), National Applied ResearchLaboratories

ChineseTaipeiTaiwan Typhoon and Flood Research Institute (TTFRI), National Applied Research Laboratories

ChineseTaipeiDisaster Prevention Research Center (DPRC), National Cheng-Kung University (NCKU)

ChineseTaipeiTainan Hydraulics Laboratory (THL), National Cheng Kung University (NCKU)

ChineseTaipeiNational Science and Technology Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR)

ChineseTaipeiCenter for Weather Climate and Disaster Research (WCDR), National Taiwan University

Tajikistan

Mountain Societies Research Institute (MSRI), University of Central Asia

ThailandGlobal Environmental Studies/Management, Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC)

ThailandDisaster Preparedness, Mitigation and Management (DPMM), Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)TurkeyKandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute, Bogazici University

Vietnam

Department of Geo-Environment, VietNam National University (VNU), Hanoi

GADRI Annual Report 2020—46

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese
Academy of Sciences (ITPCAS), China
http://ceep.bit.edu.cn/english/

Under the cooperation agreement between ITPCAS
and DPRI, the two sides carried out fruitfulcooperation research activities. Prof. Ling Bai fromITPCAS and Prof. James Mori from DPRI jointly
organized a session on the 2020 JpGU-AGU
meeting, entitled ‘Tectonic collision systems incontinents and oceans’. A new international
cooperative project let by Prof. Bai and Prof. Mori isfunded by CAS (see details below).

Project:
International research project supported by CAS,International team on the study of crustal andmantle structure beneath the Himalayan Orogenic
belt and its shallow response, Primary investigators:
Prof. Bai, Prof. Mori (No. GJTD-2019-04),
2020.01.01~2022.12.31.

Projects

Prof. Yaoming Ma
E-mail: ymma@itpcas.ac.cn

GADRI Annual Report 2020—47

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

College of Architecture and Environment
Sichuan University (SCU), China
http://www.scu.edu.cn/acem/

Participated and organized the 3rd International
Conference on engineering innovation andseismic mitigation of bridges.

In 2020, we participated in the organization of the
3rd International Conference on Engineering
Innovation and Seismic Mitigation of Bridges from
November 21, 2020 to November 22, 2020. The
online conference was aims to promote the scientificdevelopment of bridge structures in the field ofearthquake prevention and disaster reduction andengineering innovation, provide important theoreticaland technical support for bridge construction andengineering safety, to promote bridge structure
design and construction and multi-hazard resilience
research, teaching, design, to exchange andcooperation of personnel in production-related fields,
and to improve bridge structure design and multihazard prevention theory, test, Calculation, design,
construction, and application.

Held an online cooperation and exchange
meeting on "Resilience-based industrial building
seismic design and post-earthquake evaluation".
The online meeting with the topic "Resilience-based
seismic design and post-earthquake

evaluation of industrial buildings" was held
September 28, 2020. Professor Dai Kaoshan, Dr.
Wang Jianzi and other Chinese members of theteam and Professor Fabrizio Paolacci from the
University of Rome, Italy, Professor Oreste S. Bursifrom University of Trento, Italy and other colleagues
from Italy joined the meeting. Both teams
exchanged their experiences, discussed anddetermined research topics that could becollaborated in the near future.

Prof. Kaoshan Dai
Chair
E-mail: kdai@scu.edu.cn

GADRI Annual Report 2020—48

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Institute for Disaster Management andReconstruction, Sichuan University (SCU), China
http://www.idmr.scu.edu.cn/

In 2020, IDMR made progress in the following
directions: 1) continuing to develop our innovative,
research-based, interdisciplinary educational programs;2) contributing directly to COVID-19 response, incollaboration with Sichuan University’s Medical School,
and in particular through our disaster nursing program;
3) strengthening our contributions to the majorinternational initiatives in which we play leadershiproles, and; 4) continuing to build the strength of ourfaculty with many exciting hires in key interdisciplinary
areas for our strategic future.
Continued work on curricular innovation: Our most
exciting development is the successful launching of ourundergraduate “International Class on Disaster Risk
Reduction and Emergency Management Innovation”.
The basic structure is that we accept students at the
beginning of their sophomore years, from all majors in
the university, in a highly competitive process, to join athree-year undergraduate research program.
The
student teams (3 – 5 students/team) work under theguidance of teams of faculty members, both Chineseand foreign, including from our partner universities andfrom international organizations. For the 2020 cohort,
the 8 research themes include: disaster mental health(with a focus on mental health of university students andof nurses in the context of COVID-19); mapping ofinternational research and education on DRR (with afocus on geographical and knowledge-graph mappingof worldwide activities); disaster education (focusing on
low-cost sustainable methods for connecting local
communities
to
DRR
information
resources);climate stress andurban resilience (with a focus
onurban
flooding and urban heat islands);
water,

disaster and culture (looking at
disaster resilience of protected sites,with a focus on heritage sites in
Sichuan Province); earth sciences forsustainable development (with a focus
on landslides and early warning
systems); post-disaster environmental
management(focusingontechnologies for air and water
purification as well as on disaster
waste management), and; resilience of
health care systems (focusing on
capacity of these systems to sustain
shocks and recover). We are happy to share our workon this innovation class, which is closely linked with
IDMR’s research priorities, with other GADRI partners.
In terms of COVID-19 response, IDRM worked actively
with our Medical School, including the Schools ofEmergency Medicine, Public Health and Nursing in realtime response to the crisis. Our disaster nursing
masters students were particularly heroic, spending
months on the frontline in Wuhan, building on the
training in our Institute and mobilizing far broader
networks of nurses in China to share information andprovide mutual support online.
IDMR continued to work actively with the High-Level
Panel on Water and Disasters (HELP) and on our effort
to build the Alliance of Alliances (AoA). Together withHELP and other global partners we contributed to thedevelopment of “Principles to Address Water-Related
Disaster Risk Reduction under the COVID-19
Pandemic”. We also contributed to multiple high-levelinternational conferences on this topic and others. We
also continued to develop our work with the Alliance of
National Science Organization on the belt and roadefforts on DRR, ANSO-DRR, and to our work with UINSPIRE, a network of youth and young professional in
DRR research, now expanded to 12 countries in Asiawith more than a thousand members.
We were successful in hiring 8 outstanding new faculty
members, in highly strategic areas, and will be
continuing our aggressive hiring
campaign in 2021.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—49

Prof. Gretchen Kalonji
DeanE-mail: Gretchen.kalonji@qq.com

GADRI Annual Report — AsiaGADRI Annual Report — Asia

Hong Kong Jockey Club Disaster
Preparedness and Response Institute(HKJCDPRI), Hong Kong, China
http://www.hkjcdpri.org.hk/
Contribution to enhancing city’s response
capacity
Incident Command System Training For the Fire
Services Department of the Hong Kong Special
Administrative Region (HKSAR) Government
To enhance the capability of frontline fire
personnel in handling fire and emergency
incidents, the HKJCDPRI joined hands with theFire Services Department to organise theIncident Command System training on 10 July
2020 at the Fire and Ambulance Services
Academy. With the aid of VR technology, asimulation of a fire breaking out in an industrial
building was created. Participants had to play therole of incident commander, assessed the on-siteenvironment and situation, and performed
command tasks. Comparing with traditional tabletop
training, VR simulation training not only provides
participants with immersive visual and auditory
effects, but also enriches their learning experienceand effectiveness through realistic interactive
scenarios.

Use of VR to simulate the fire scene inside the building

Students enjoying the drama
thunderous laughter and students responded tocharacters' questions with great enthusiasm.
Launch of Chinese Version of COPE Children's
Books
COPE, a series of children's books, aims atteaching children how to "Get Ready and Be
Prepared for Disasters". The books were originatedin English. In collaboration with the Hong Kong
Observatory; Dr. Kwan Che Ying, Associate
Professor, Centre for Advancement of Chinese
Language Education and Research, and The
University of Hong Kong, the HKJCDPRI translated
the book to Chinese with content for local readers.
The Chinese version of the books, the"Earthquake!" and "Get Up To High Ground (forTsunami) ", were published.
Coping with the COVID-19 Disease

Community Engagement
New Disaster Education Drama for Primary SchoolStudents
HKJCDPRI launched a new disaster education
drama "Preparing Kids for Disasters" incollaboration with Drama Gallery, continuing its
teaching to children on different kinds of disasters,
as well as disaster risk reduction, mitigation andresponse. The programme was completed in
November 2020, a total of 11,293 students from 50
primary schools watched the drama via Zoom or onsite performance. Students enjoyed the show withIn response to the outbreak of COVID-19,
HKJCDPRI has taken a number of initiatives,
sharing professional knowledge and updated
information with the community and professionals
from different sectors. A webpage, "Useful
Information on COVID-19" was established in early
2020.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—50

Mr. Johnson Lo
Director
E-mail: johnson@hkam.org.hk

GADRI Annual Report — AsiaGADRI Annual Report — Asia

Centre of Excellence in Disaster Mitigation &Management Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Roorkee, India
https://www.iitr.ac.in/centers/COEDMM/ pages/Home.html

The CoEDMM Associated Faculty, Dr. Sudip
Roy, is visiting the Disaster Prevention ResearchInstitute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Uji Campus,
Kyoto, Japan as a Visiting Research Scholar
since February 1, 2020 till date. Dr. Roy iscurrently visiting and working in collaboration with
Prof. Hirokazu Tatano and Dr. Subhajyoti
Samaddar in the “Research Section of Social
Systems for Disaster Risk Governance" under the“Research Division of Disaster Management for
Safe and Secure Society" of DPRI under the
Graduate
SchoolofInformatics, Department ofSocialInformatics,
Kyoto
University, Uji Campus, Kyoto,
Japan.

(through weekly sessions). Emphasis of the event
is to develop implementable solutions andprototype development. Students of SIOH got the
support from Prof Rajib Shaw from India Japanlaboratory Keio university, Japan, Prof Mahua
Mukherjee and many more. Academic institutes(IITs & NITs), business organizations and media
partnership blended in this SIOH. Professor Sudip
Roy, Professor Saptarshi Kolay and Professor
Inderdeep Singh represented IIT Roorkee in the
Mentors’ group. This was highly appreciated andattended by high officials including Ambassadors,

Students’ Participation in
Social Innovation Online
Hackathon (SIOH)
Indo-Japan Laboratory (Keio
University, Japan), CoEDMMIIT Roorkee, IIT Hyderabad,
VNIT Nagpur, NIT Durgapur
and RIKA India launchedSocialInnovation
OnlineHackathon (SIOH) 2020 on 16th
June
2020.
ARISE-India
supported the initiative andDainik Bhaskar was the media partner. SIOH
aimed to provide a unique virtual platform tostudent
innovators
andmission-driven
entrepreneurs from different fields to collaborate
and develop innovative solutions for tackling theissues of pandemic and future disasters. This
innovative Indo-Japan multi-institute event isconceived by Professor Rajib Shaw from Keio
university Japan where he is Director of Indo
Japan Lab. This was instituted as a 10 week+
programme during lockdown periods due to thePandemic, so that young
talents
canbeengagedinpositive activities during
thiscriticalperiod. To ensure the wider
outreachand feasibility of innovative ideas/solutions,thematic mentors guided the specific groups

India & Japan, business houses,
entrepreneurs from both the countries.

eminent

It is an extreme delight for the Centre that the all
three teams selected for Final pitching had thestudents from IIT Roorkee and teams havealready started their application developments.
For more information, please visit webpage:https://nagrikdialogue.in/pitchevent-social-innovation-onlinehackathon-2020/

GADRI Annual Report 2020—51

Prof. Mahua Mukherjee
Director
E-mail: coe_dmm@iitr.ac.in

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

The CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee is now part of theOrganizing Team of the 5th Word Congress ofDisaster Management (WCDM-2020) as aknowledge partner; the Conference is now
scheduled to be held in 2021.
The CoEDMM was a Co-organizer for the First
A.
S.
Arya
Memorial
Lectureheld
on 1st September, 2020. Professor M L
Sharma, Joint Faculty to the CoEDMM delivered
the First A S Arya Memorial Lecture. Professor
Mahua Mukherjee paid tribute to the legendary
Professor A S Arya in the programme. Professor
A S Arya (1931-2019), first Sasakawa Laureate
from India, has worked tirelessly in the field ofearthquake safety and risk resilience.
The CoEDMM organized D'Conscientia 2020
on 13th October 2020
The
D'Conscientia
2020 was the
4th edition oftheAnnualStudents’
Eventorganized in
the Centre of
Excellence inDisaster
Mitigation andManagement(CoEDMM), Indian Institute of Technology
Roorkee, India to create awareness among thestudents,
scholars,
disastermanagers,
professionals, other stakeholders and thecommunity about the preparedness initiatives fordisaster and climate-change-induced Risk
Resilience building. It was organized tocommemorate the occasion of "International Day
for Natural Disaster Reduction 2020", which falls
on Tuesday, October 13, each year the
CoEDMM will organized an Online Industry-

Academia Interactive Meet on "Industry,Innovation and Risk Reduction in Post-COVID-19 Period". Industry, is among the hard-hit
sectors, after the Pandemic Covid-19. So, thistime, the D'Conscientia 2020, was around the
topics relevant towards Post- COVID-19
resilience initiatives primarily. COVID-19 gave us
an opportunity to re-think the disaster risk
governance, focusing on one of the seven global
goals of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction
2015-2030,alignedwith
theSustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and theParis Agreement on Climate Change. This time
the programme was designed as to alignimportant aspects like students’ aspiration,industry and expert feedback on academic
processinrisk
resilience,
post-COVID
complexity, etc. It was a pleasure for the
department to have extremely revered guests
and speakers present for the event to share theirexperiences and knowledge on the theme topic.
The Expert talk was delivered by Mr. Manu
Prakash from TARU Leading edge, India and
Mr. Rubaab Sood from FICCI, India. Both ofthem – Champions in their respective fields. For
Guest of honor, we had the privilege of having.
Anil Sinha, Retd. IAS and former Vice
Chairman, BSDMA, India- one of the main
Architect, who guided the High-power Committee
Report 2001.
The guest lecture was delivered by Professor
Tatano, Chief Guest of the programme. He

has championed the case of global
networking of Research Academic Institutes
who are working in Risk field. He represents
GADRI (Global Alliance of Disaster
Research Institutes).
For more information, please visit webpage:https://www.iitr.ac.in/centers/COEDMM/
pages/D_Conscientia.html

GADRI Annual Report 2020—52

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Online Certificate Training on Risk Management of
Biological Hazards in the context of pandemics
during 12-16 October 2020
An online Certificate Training on “Risk management of
Biological Hazards in the context of pandemics wasorganized (dates) by Indo-Japan Laboratory of Keio
University, Japan, CoEDMM- IIT Roorkee, RIKA-India,
ARISE-India and GIDM, Gujrat. Approximately 200
participants from diverse sectors including state disastermanagement agencies, disaster response forces,
academic institutes, participated in the training
workshop. Prof Mahua Mukherjee and Prof Ranjana
Pathania from the COEDMM at IIT Roorkee delivered
lectures for Module 2 and Module 4. On 13th October,2020 Prof Mukherjee talked on “Multi-hazard risk
Assessment nd management” and Prof Pathania
talked on “Principles of biohazard risk management”.
Prof Pathania talked about various biological hazards,
risks associated with them, various matrices that are
employed to assess and quantify these risks andmeasures to be taken in infectious agent biohazards

citing various examples including the ongoing COVID-19
pandemic.

Professor Mukherjee as part of Module 4 Challenges
and way forward for Micro, Small and Medium
Enterprises (MSMEs) discussed the lessons learnt fromthe Pan India case studies on 15th October, 2020. At theend of these sessions the participants interacted with the
speakers and answered quiz questions.

2020 Asia Pacific Science and Technology Confer- Kuala Lumpur, and organized by UKM, APSTAAG andence
for
Disaster
Risk
Reduction UNDRR on 15th October 2020. This time the eAP(eAPSTCDRR) Conference
STCDRR held the Science-Policy Dialogue for Implementation of the Sendai Framework; and at the end ofProfessor Mahua Mukherjee, an APSTAAG BoD
the day could bring out the Kuala Lumpur Consensus
member, took part in the 2020 Asia Pacific Scienceon S&T for Disaster Risk Reduction. Professor
and Technology Conference for Disaster Risk ReMukherjee co-moderated the Technical Session III:
duction (eAPSTCDRR) Conference as part of the
Climate Risk and Local Action.
Organizing Team. The Conference washeld in hybrid mode i.e. both
physical meet and thevirtual mode were inuse. This was held at

GADRI Annual Report 2020—53

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

The CoEDMM organized the First JKML of theProfessor Jai Krishna Memorial Lecture (JKML)

Series on November 6, 2020.

Dr P K Mishra’s far-sighted talk generated interest

The CoEDMM, being a platform to nurture multidisciplinary interactions aiming resilience from disaster and climate change-induced risks, and responsibly engaged in developing techno-managerial capacity towards comprehensive disaster risk reduction,
initiated the CoEDMM Memorial Lecture Series in thename of Professor Jai Krishna, a luminary engineer
and educator. Contributions of Professor Jai Krishna

and stimulated discussion among DRR professionals,
both at national and international level. His thought-

to multiple disciplines of Engineering and Science, isbefitting with the multi-hazard risk resilience missionof the CoEDMM. His dynamic, insightful and enterprising leadership shaped the contemporary Engineering Education and Profession in India and beyond to reach a newer height. This is privilege andhonour for the CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee to dedicate its
Endowment Lecture Series to Professor Jai Krishna.
The CoEDMM organised the First Professor Jai
Krishna Memorial Lecture (JKML) on Friday, No-

ful rendering of black swan events of past and thepresent COVID-19 pandemic situation brought forward the criticality of the context in right perspective.
Ms Mami Mizutori, Head - UNDRR and Special
Representative of the UN Secretary-General(SRSG) attended the First JKML Event and put
forward her comments on the First JKML delivered by
Dr P K Mishra. She shared her wisdom with the audience while commenting on Dr Mishra’s lecture aspractical, far-sighted and intellectually rich. Her presence made the First JKML a milestone event, notonly for IIT Roorkee but also for the country. The
Event was organized in WebEx platform and simultaneously on YouTube Platform. The First JKML wasvember 6, 2020, as an Online Event. The First Me-

broadcasted LIVE at DD News, DD Urttarakhand,and DD Udisha. The First JKML was organized bymorial Lecture was delivered by Dr. Pramod Ku-

Prof. Mahua Mukherjee, Prof. Sudip Roy, Prof.

mar Mishra, 2019 Sasakawa Laureate and Principal
Secretary to the Prime Minister of India. His dis-Anil Kumar Gourishetty, and Prof. Saptarshi Kolay.

course was on “COVID-19, Black Swan Events, andthe Future of Disaster Risk Management in India”.

For

more

information, please visit webpage:https://www.iitr.ac.in/pages/

centers/COEDMM/
Mis-

cellaneous+JKML_Series.html
GADRI Annual Report 2020—54

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

The South Asia Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes(SAADRI) formed at CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee
13th November 2020

The South Asia Alliance of Disaster ResearchInstitutes (SAADRI) is formed at the Centre of
Excellence in Disaster Mitigation and Management(CoEDMM), IIT Roorkee, India on 13th November
2020. On 6th November 2020 during the First Jai
Krishna Memorial Lecture hosted by the CoEDMM,
IIT Roorkee, the IIT Roorkee Director, Professor A
K Chaturvedi announced the commencement of
SAADRI in CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee. Other
dignitaries present were Ms Mami Mizutori,
UNDRR Head & Special Representative to UN
Secretary-General, Dr P K Mishra, Sasakawa
Laureate of UNDRR and Principal Secretary of PM
of India, and 500 plus dignitaries & participants
online. The SAADRI aims to deepen theunderstanding of disasters in the South Asia
Region including climate change impact, learn fromevidence-based lessons, investigate and resolve
implementation challenges, to achieve better
resilience, infrastructure and technology adoption
systems, improved livelihood of people, andpromote societal safety culture by integratingknowledge and technologies. At the formation
stage SAADRI will start with members from 5
South Asian countries: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India,
Nepal and Sri Lanka. And it will co-opt members
from other countries too. The SAADRI Secretariat
can be reached at SAADRI@iitr.ac.in and
SAADRI.iitr@gmail.com.

SAADRI Program Advisors:•

Professor B. Misra – Emeritus Professor,
School of Planning and Architecture, New
Delhi

•

Professor
M.
L.
Sharma,Professor,
Department of Earthquake Engineering and
Joint Faculty at CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee

SAADRI Secretary-General:•

Professor Mahua Mukherjee, Department ofArchitecture and Planning and Joint Faculty at
CoEDMM, IITRoorkee

For more information, please visit webpage:https://www.iitr.ac.in/centers/COEDMM/pages/
SAADRI.html

GADRI Annual Report 2020—55

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

The CoEDMM is an organizing partner for the
Urban Thinker Campus 5.0 to be held at Nagpur,
India during December 9-11, 2020.
The CoEDMM is co-organizing the UN-Habitat’s
Urban Thinker Campus 5.0 from 9-11 December
2020 with prime theme on TACTFUL (Think
innovAte aCT For Urban cLimate-change) in joint
collaboration with Keio University, Japan; VNIT,
Nagpur; RIKA India; Arise-India; FICCI; IRDR-ICoE;
IRDR-RCS and RUPO. The event is spreadthrough three days and participants will witness
range of scholarly engagements. There will be
Urban Labs and plenary sessions on sub-themes
on Research & Practices for managing impacts ofUrban Heat & COVID-19 in Urban Areas;
Showcasing the urban climate change initiatives in
Asia. A competition titled The Campus Innovation
Challenge with cash prices along with opportunity
for incubation of the presented ideas for the winning
entries is also hosted by the UTC 5.0 team. The
chief guest of event will Honorable Minister Mr.
Nitin Gadkari, Cabinet Minister for Road Transport& Highways and the Minister of Micro, Small andMedium Enterprises, GoI. Special address would
be delivered by Ms. Mami Mizutori, SRSG and
Head, UNDRR. The event will include key speakers

Prof. Rajib Shaw, Professor and Director, India
Japan Lab, Keio University, Japan and Co-Founder
RIKA India; Dr. Mazlan Othman, Director Regional
Office for Asia and the Pacific, International
Science Council, Malaysia; Dr. Emily Ying-Yang
Chan Director, Collaborating Centre for Oxford
University and CUHK for Disaster and Medical
Humanitarian Response, Hong Kong, China; Dr.
Rosa T. Perez, Member of the National Panel ofTechnical Experts of the Climate Change
Commission, Philippines; Mrs. Norliza Hashim,
Chief Executive in URBANICE Malaysia, Ministry of
Housing & Local Government, Kuala Lumpur,
Malaysia; Mr. Ram Joshi, Additional Commissioner,
Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Nagpur; Mr. Jürgen
Baumann, Program Head of Sustainable Urban
Transport for Smart Cities in India, GIZ India;
among others. Professor Ajanta Goswami andProfessor Harshit Lakra are representing the
CoEDMM, IIT Roorkee and will engage in the event
through delivering talk and advising in thechallenge. For more information, please visit
webpage:https://www.worldurbancampaign.org/
urban-thinkers-campus

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GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Liberal Arts and Humanities
O.P. Jindal Global University, India
http://www.jslh.edu.in/

O.P. Jindal Global University is one of India’s
youngest and fastest growing universities. Just ten
years old, it has grown from a single school (Law)
into a fully-fledged social science and humanities
based university with schools of Law, International
Affairs, Government and Public policy, Banking and
Finance, Architecture, Liberal Arts and Humanities,
Journalism, Business and, most recently, a newschool of Environment and Sustainability. Thislatter programme, which has its origin in a smaller
Centre, is now being expanded into an independent
school with both undergraduate and post-graduate
degree courses.

theme of “Building Back Better”” and participated in
graduate classes at DPRI. In addition, he undertook aresearch project on a holistic approach to disastermanagement and recovery, due to be completed inearly 2021. The next step at O.P. Jindal Global
University will be the development of advanced
courses in disaster management in the new School ofEnvironment and Development which are underdiscussion and the development of inter-disciplinary
work which is in the planning stage with the Schoolsof International Affairs, Government and Business at
the university.

A major change has been the creation of a full schoolof Environmental Studies and Sustainability in 2020
emerging from the smaller research institute thatpreceded the formation of the School. Issues ofDisaster Prevention and Management are integrated
into a number of the new undergraduate classes andwhile there is as yet no specific course on the subject,
it is considered integral to the class content
throughout the School. One member, Professor John
Clammer, has spent the year 2020-21 at the Kyoto
University Disaster Prevention Research Institute as
a visiting professor, andtaught a course on thesubjectof“Culture,
Sustainability and Disaster
Recovery”
forboth
undergraduate
andgraduatestudents, delivered a public lecture on the occasion of
the GADRI annual conference, and another on the

GADRI Annual Report 2020—57

Prof. John Clammer
E-mail: jrclammer@jgu.edu.in

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

International Institute of Earthquake Engineering andSeismology (IIEES), Iran
http://www.iiees.ac.ir/en/

In 2020, the main following activities were undertaken: 10. Lithosphere and Upper Mantle Structure beneath
the Zagros and Alborz Collision Zones.
1. Establishment of the Regional Education andResearchCenteron
Earthquake
Risk 11. Comprehensive Earthquake and Tsunami Hazard
Management and Resilience for West and Central
Assessment of the Makran subduction zone.
Asia, as Category 2 Centre under the auspices of
12. Developing guidelines for: Post-Earthquake Rapid
UNESCO;
Assessment of buildings, repair of damaged
2. Commissioning the largest Advanced Earthquake
buildings after earthquakes, Design of baseEngineering Laboratory in the Middle East at
isolated highway bridges, risk assessment of
IIEES;
buildings and infrastructure.
3. Developing National PDNA Guidelines for 19 13. Seismic vulnerability studies of Tehran Sewer
sectors in Social, Infrastructure, Productive andNetwork Transmission Lines.
Cross-Cutting Fields;
 Hazard zonation and stabilization of
4. Developing Rapid Assessment of Iran Seismic
landslides triggered by 2019 floods andEvents (RAISE) for real time estimation ofheavy rainfall in 17 villages of Lorestan andearthquake parameters;
Semnan Provinces.
5. Invention of High Frequency Image Processing
System (AFRA) for real-time displacement
measurement (winner of Kharazmi International
Festival Award);
6. Organizing 22nd National Earthquake and Safety
Drill;
7. Seismicity and 3D crustal structure of Central
Alborz, Iran Using Local Earthquake Dataset
8. Deep structure of Iranian plateau from seismic,
gravity, and thermal modeling.

Prof. Mohsen Ghafory-Ashtiany

9. Expansion of IIEES National Broadband Seismic
Network from 28 to 32 stations.

E-mail: ashtiany@iiees.ac.ir;
mohsen.ashtiany@gmail.com

Special Adviser

GADRI Annual Report 2020—58

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GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Israel National Knowledge and ResearchCenter for Emergency Readiness
University of Haifa, Israel
http://muchanut.haifa.ac.il
The National Knowledge and Research Center for
Emergency Preparedness was established in January
2018 with 90 researchers divided among 8 disciplinary
research teams: Law; Public Policy; Social Science;
Public Health and Emergency Medicine; Welfare andSocial Work; Engineering, Technology and Planning;
Risk Assessment and Management; and Environment.
In 2020 we continued with 8 multi-disciplinary long term
research projects (See here) but the bulk for the newresearch is on COVID-19.
The Center's contribution to the COVID-19 effort istwofold:
1)
Streaming
insights,
data,andrecommendations for decision makers and supporting
teams, based on research on coping with epidemics ingeneral, and Covid-19 in particular. 2) Characterizing
issues that require addressing and answering decisionmakers' questions (in the National Security Council(NSC), Ministry of Science; National Emergency
Management Administration (RACHEL), and other thinktanks).

COVID-19 Research - short, medium and long term
projects:•"The day after" – multi-disciplinary strategies forcoping, gradual exit and crisis recovery, including
the following:•

From SARS/MERS to COVID-19: A Comparative
Overview of Policy Learning in Four East-Asian
Polities (S. Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore)and Israel•

The Impact of COVID-19 on Well-being(Collaboration with the International Institute forApplied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg,
Austria) and the impact of COVID-19 on well-beingin Israel•

Comparative Study of European(Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Greece)•

Survey of Israeli Public Health Professionals
Reactions to Policies (May 2020)•

Using crowd- sourcing surveys for input from thepublic on the ongoing crisis management

Strategies•

Smart and portable autonomous structures to deal
with epidemic - a reserve of isolation and treatment
facilities•

Building social resilience and trust in the era of theCorona virus epidemic and global risks: anintegrative approach of man and society•

The domino effect in the tourism industry of theCorona virus: analysis and recommendations•

Corona epidemic characteristics among lowincome, refugee and new immigrant populations•

Agent-based simulation of the spatial spread of theCorona virus in major cities in Israel•Corona epidemic - estimating the economic costs ofvarious coping measures. sensitivity analysis•

Personal, community and national resilience inIsrael during the Corona crisis•

Post-traumatic stress response, uncertainty, world
assumptions and loss of resources in the end andafter the corona epidemic•

Is it possible to study at such a time? Examining therelationship between parents' meta abilities andlearning ability from their children's home during thecorona pandemic•

Poverty in the Corona: Challenges and struggles ofpeople living in poverty following the Corona
epidemic•

The interplay between government and public in an
emergency•

Developing community-urban resilience in local
authorities and planning urban space inemergencies•

A legal-regulatory series on dealing withemergencies in Israel

Dr. Michal Ben Gal
Research CoordinatorE-mail: bmichal@geo.haifa.ac.il

GADRI Annual Report 2020—60

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3 May 2020 round table: the Scientific Basis for Preparedness to COVID-19 and Other
Pandemics (in collaboration with Haifa University School of Public HealthProf. Halberthal, General Director of Rambam Health Care Campus talk about Hospital
Readiness in Corona Times: Challenges and Solutions in one of the Center’s seminar
talks

GADRI Annual Report 2020—61

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Institute for Environment and Development(LESTARI-UKM)
University of Kabangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia
http://www.ukm.my/lestari/ms/
Inaugural Meeting of the Ocean Malaysia
Partnership (15 December 2020)

Malaysia is a maritime nation, blessed with 29th
longest coastline comprising of two distinct parts of
Malaysia, namely, the Peninsular Malaysia boundedby Malacca Strait and the East Malaysia surroundedby the South China Sea. Because of the large
coastline and ocean oriented life, the ocean
contributes significantly to the country andcommunities. As a consequence, more than 60% of
the total population lives near the coastal area of
Malaysia as well as the maritime sector of Malaysia
contributes about 40% to the gross domestic product.
However, the healthy growth in the maritime industry
is not free from challenges, where pollution, disasterand food security play significant roles. Considering
this, the Ocean Malaysia Partnership has been
proposed to address emerging pressures linked to
Malaysia’s coastal and ocean region. Ocean Malaysia
partnership is a brand-new idea initiated in LESTARI
through the collaboration of the Scientific director of
Ocean Canada, Prof. Rashid Sumaila, who has been
appointed as a distinguished international professor in
LESTARI in 2020. The Ocean Malaysia is inspired by
Ocean Canada and in-line with the newly proclaimed“Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable
Development (2021-2030)” by the United Nations.
The principal goal of Ocean Malaysia is to findbenefits of humanity through understanding andaddressing threats facing Malaysia’s West coast, East
coast and Borneo Region and seek opportunities todevelop a shared vision for the future of our oceans
and community. The Ocean Malaysia partnershipinitiative is highly interdisciplinary, and the research
will integrate a wide range of expertise from many

fields of study, including economics, law,
geography, ethics, fisheries science andoceanography. The virtual inaugural meetingof Ocean Malaysia partnership has beensuccessfully organized by LESTARI on 15th
December 2020 involving the scientific directorof Ocean Canada, participants from various
universities, research institutions, government
and non-governmental organizations andpolicy makers across the country. Ocean Malaysia isvery fortunate to have more than 20 highly recognized
and influential researchers in the team.
Furthermore, LESTARI has played an important rolein the formation of adaptive management approachfor the Langkawi UNESCO Global Geo-park (LUGG),
where the deterioration of coral reefs is at a criticallevel. The overall objective of this project is to develop
ecosystem approaches to fisheries management forbiologically-globally significant and commerciallyimportant areas beyond national jurisdiction. Under
this project, a focus group discussion has been
conducted on 2nd February 2020, involving
participants from several fisheries communities. The
focus group discussion has recommended a numberof adaptation options including, awareness raising inconserving marine life among the local fishingcommunities; reviewing the roles of enforcement
agencies; introducing seasonal fishing system toenable the survival of marine life, deploying artificial
reefs as an alternative fishing location; and recoordinating previously planned activities to foster thetrust and participation of the local fisheries community
in the EAFM program.

Prof. Dato’ ChM Mazlin bin Mokhtar
Director & Principal Fellow, LESTARI,
UKM
E-mail: mazlin@ukm.edu.my

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The Ocean Malaysia Partnership Goal: proposed by Dr. Lubna Alam
(Coordinator Ocean Malaysia)

Geo-Coral Adoption Program, coordinated by Mr. Jamil Tajam
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Southeast Asia Disaster Prevention Research
Initiative (SEADPRI-UKM)
University of Kabangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia
http://www.ukm.my/seadpri/

Since 2016, SEADPRI-UKM was awarded as
Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR)International Centre of Excellence (ICoE) for
Disaster Risk and Climate Extremes. Hence
SEADPRI-UKM is now one of the 17 ICoEs at the
global level, which aims to promote DRR activities
and programmes within the respective regions. The
ICoE represents, in this case of SEADPRI-UKM, theSouth East Asian region, focusing on strengthening
localised inputs to address regional DRR related
matters. SEADPRI-UKM will continue to capitaliseon this partnership framework to further advancework related on DRR.

Since 2019, SEADPRI-UKM hosted the U-INSPIRE
Malaysia Chapter, under the auspices of the Asian
Network for Climate Science and Technology(ANCST), with supports from the National Disaster
Management Agency Malaysia (NADMA) and
Malaysian National Commission for UNESCO. This
platform involved an alliance of youth and young
professionals in Malaysia, who shared an interest in
DRR and climate change.

supported by community engagement and citizen
science on an open-access digital platform. The
project is led by SEADPRI-UKM, and the key
partners include the Royal University of Phnom
Pehn (RUPP), Geological Society of Malaysia(GSM) and Malaysian DRR Service Organization(MDRRSO).

On 15 October 2020, the virtual 2020 Asia-Pacific
Science and Technology Conference for Disaster
Risk Reduction (eAPSTCDRR) was convened by
the Government of Malaysia and the UNDRR, in
partnership with SEADPRI-UKM, Academy of
Sciences Malaysia and International Science
Council. The eAPSTCDRR brought together around
200 participants from across the Asia-Pacific region,
to discuss how to strengthen science-based DRR
policy development for building the resilience ofcommunities and infrastructure. An outcome
document – ‘KL Consensus on Science &Technology for DRR’ was produced with due
consideration from the Sendai Framework to “build
back better” in this window of opportunity, as theregion moves to recover from the COVID-19
pandemic.

A new project on “Promotion of Social
Entrepreneurship in Disaster Risk Reduction to
Build Community Resilience” funded by theInternational Development Research Centre (IDRC)
for a duration of 3-years was officially launched on
21 Jan 2020. The Project aims to foster long-term
community climate resilience in Malaysia andCambodia by empowering young female social
entrepreneurs to develop disaster resilience plans

Assoc. Prof. Goh Choo Ta
Head, SEADPRI, UKM
E-mail: seadpri@ukm.edu.my

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At the eAPSTCDRR, Malaysia also announced its
development on National Risk Register under theaegis of the National Disaster Management Agency
Malaysia (NADMA), with technical support fromSEADPRI-UKM. It is an augural effort to chart themechanism of disaster risk management in the
country, risk profiling and establish a comprehensive
disaster data repository. The repository will utilise the
DesInventar, a software promoted by the UNDRR as adisaster information management system.

“Nanomaterials based-Genosensor for Improved
Detection Method of SARS-CoV-2 RNA as Rapid
COVID-19 Diagnosis Strategy” was funded byInternational Centre for Genetic Engineering andBiotechnology (ICGEB) Research Grants Programme
2020. The one-year project will develop biosensor thatenable COVID-19 non-invasive human bodily fluids
screening, without the need for peripheral equipment,
for rapid early diagnosis of infections.

Biosensor holds an enormous potential for clinicaldiagnosis of genetic or infectious diseases, fordetection of food-contaminating organisms, forenvironmental monitoring and industrial processcontrol and in criminal investigations. A new project on

At the launch event of the project on “Promotion of Social Entrepreneurship in Disaster Risk Reduction to Build Community Resilience” funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC): Project Advisor and Vice President of the Academy of
Sciences Malaysia, YM Tengku Mohd Azzman Shariffadeen (far right) presented a token of
appreciation to Her Excellency Julia Bentley, the High Commissioner ofCanada in Malaysia,
with Tuan Ahmad Fairuz representing the Selangor Chief Minister.

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International Centre for Integrated Mountain
Development, Nepal
https://www.icimod.org/
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain
Development (ICIMOD)
The recent flood in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand in
India was a starkly tragic reminder of the dangers thatcan be present in mountain environments across the
Hindu Kush Himalaya region where ICIMOD works. Ourcolleagues have recently produced a report onunderstanding the Chamoli flood: Cause, process,
impacts,
andcontextof
rapid
infrastructuredevelopment. Despite early news pieces surmising thatthe flood was caused by a glacial lake outburst flood(GLOF) event, it was later confirmed that this was not
the cause. Rather, it was caused by a massive rockslideand infrastructure in the flood path, particularlyhydropower projects, exacerbated the impact of theflood. This makes more than clear the importance ofcomprehensive monitoring of mountain environments
and also that infrastructure development in fragile
mountain environments should consider a sustainability
framework, including environmental sustainability.
New Director General Announcement
In 2020, the Board of Governors of the International
Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD)
announced the appointment of a new Director General,
Dr Pema Gyamtsho. Succeeding Dr David Molden at his
retirement from the Director General position in which
he served for nearly a decade with his depth andbreadth of intelligence, wisdom and gracious, peopleoriented leadership, Dr Gyamtsho took up the role on
15th October 2020.
HKH Ministerial Mountain Summit

Kush Himalayan (HKH) countries culminated in thesigning of an historically significant declaration agreeing
to strengthen regional cooperation in the HKH; topromote a united voice for the HKH at regional, globaland UN platforms; to enhance the uptake of scientificevidence for improving policies in the region focusing on
mountain environments and livelihoods; and to assess
the feasibility of establishing a regional institutional
mechanism.
This declaration is the culmination of a process begun
as part of the Hindu Kush Himalaya Assessment. Styled
after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) reports, the HKH Assessment underscores thesignificance of the HKH as a vital regional lifeline andglobal asset, but also provides the scientific evidence
that human drivers and climate change pose immediate
threats to the region’s livelihoods, biodiversity, andultimately, sustainability. Among the most significant ofthese drivers are climate change, demographic
changes, growing demand for nature resources, rapid
economic growth, unregulated urbanization, andwidespread poverty in the mountainous regions. Foodand nutritional insecurity remains a serious challenge inthe HKH region; more than 30% of the population
suffers from food insecurity and around 50% face someform of malnutrition, with women and children
particularly vulnerable.
The ministerial declaration recognizes and supports the
HKH Call to Action, which was drafted through a
consultative process in all eight HKH countries based on
the key findings of the HKH Assessment. This process
aimed to jointly identify and develop a roadmap towards
a more prosperous, healthy, peaceful, and resilient HKH
region, for the 240 million people living in mountains andhills, and the 1.9 billion people living in the mountains
and river basins downstream. Country-specific actions
and solutions were identified during the consultations
and six urgent actions were tailored at the local,
national, and regional levels, generating a roadmap forcollective ownership by the eight countries and actions
at multiple scales.

Dr. Basantha Raj Shreshta

On that date, ICIMOD facilitated an historicallysignificant Ministerial Mountain Summit where thegathering of Ministers from across all eight of the Hindu
GADRI Annual Report 2020—66

Director , Strategic Cooperation
E-mail: Basanta.Shrestha@icimod.org

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

New Climate Services Initiative

for a case study in Nepal

This new initiative focuses on catering to informationneeds of HKH individuals and institutions to anticipate
and manage climate-related shocks and opportunities
effectively. It builds on emerging weather and climate
modelling facilities, information dissemination platforms
and will focus on strengthening both regional
development of weather and climate services andnationally by supporting improved capacity andcapability in the HKH countries. Since ICIMOD
facilitates the implementation of the Global Framework
for Climate Services (GFCS) within the HKH region, it
aims to strengthen the institutional and technicalcapacities of various stakeholders, particularly to
improve the generation, processing, and use of climate
services and co-develop appropriate solutions. ICIMOD
thus provides a regional platform to facilitate
knowledge sharing and cooperation on science anddata; and provides opportunities for collating, curating,and sharing data for improved climate services.

•

Flood risk assessment in the Kosi megafan using
multi-criteria
decisionanalysis:Ahydrogeomorphic approach•

Adapting to urban flooding: a case of two cities inSouth Asia•

Reaching the most vulnerable: Community-based
flood early warning system (CBFEWS)•

Risks of glaciers lakes outburst flood along China
Pakistan economic corridor•

Distribution of glacial lakes in Afghanistan andobserved changes (1990–2015)•

Inventory of glacial lakes and identification ofpotentially dangerous glacial lakes in the Koshi,
Gandaki, and Karnali river basins of Nepal, theTibet Autonomous Region of China, and India•

Proceedings of the Koshi Disaster Risk Reduction
Knowledge Hub Nepal country consultation:
Building a resilient Koshi basin•

Proceedings of the Koshi Disaster Risk Reduction
Knowledge Hub: Building a resilient Koshi basin –India country consultation•

Proceedings of the regional knowledge forum on
drought: Earth observation and climate services forfood security and agricultural decision making inSouth and Southeast Asia•

Proceedings of the regional knowledge forum onearly warning for floods and high-impact weather
events

DRR-related new ICIMOD publications in 2020:•

Landslide development within 3 years after the2015 Mw 7.8 Gorkha Earthquake, Nepal•

Applicationofgeospatial
technologies
indeveloping a dynamic landslide early warning
system in a humanitarian context: the Rohingya
refugee crisis in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh•

Floodinundation
mapping- Kerala 2018;harnessing
thepower of SAR, automaticthresholddetection method and Google
Earth Engine•

Methodology for future flood assessment in termsof economic damage: Development and application

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GADRI Annual Report — Asia

German University of Technology, Oman
https://www.gutech.edu.om/

Despite restrictions due to the pandemic Prof.
Holzbecher and Dr. Hadidi continued with ongoing
research and publication during 2020. Prof.
Holzbecher participated at the 5th International
Symposium on Flash Floods in Wadi Systems(ISFF5) held at Kyoto University, on February 2528. In the preparation phase together with Dr.
Hadidi he was involved in reviewing contributions
to the symposium. His oral presentation entitled‘On Watershed Delineation for Flood Modelling in
Lowlands’ gave important clues about various
delineations methods. He was also chosen as
member of the Scientific Committee for theStudent & Young Researchers Award, offered toyoung participants.
During his stay in Kyoto Prof. Holzbecher availed
himself of the opportunity to participate at the
GADRI 3rd Open Discussion Forum ‘Changing
Expectations of Natural Hazarda: Lessons from
Recent Disasters’, on February 26th. At thecampus in Oman the team of Prof. Holzbecher
continued work on flood tracing at in anexperimental trench on GUtech campus. Twoexperiments with an artificial flooding wereconducted, on November 29th and December 1st.
Several sensors were installed in the soil below
the trench, recording saturation, temperature andsalinity during the experiment. The flow wasmeasured by V-notches at the inlet and outlet of
the trench. Students participated measuring waterlevel and other parameters in the flowing water(see Figure 1).
Several contributions were finalized for journaland book publications.
•

Hadidi A., Holzbecher E., Molenaar R., Floodmapping in face of rapid urbanization: a casestudy of wadi Majraf-Manumah, Muscat,
Sultanate of Oman, Urban Water Journal, Vol.
17,
No.
5,
publishedonline:10.1080/1573062X.2020.1713172•

Holzbecher E., Hadidi A., Volp N.D., deKoning J., Al Badi H., Al Khatri A., Al Barwani
A., Advanced Tools for Flood Management:
An Early Warning System for Arid and SemiArid Regions, in: Sumi T., Kantoush S., Saber
M. (eds), Wadi Flash Floods, Springer Publ.,
to appear•

Holzbecher E., Hadidi A., Sediment Transportin Shallow Waters as a Multiphysics
Approach, in: Sumi T., Kantoush S., Saber M.
(eds), Wadi Flash Floods, Springer Publ., toappearProf. Ekkehard Holzbecher
E-mail: Ekkehard.holzbecher@gutech.edu.om

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GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Figure 1: Students participating in the field at the experimental trench on GUtech campus

GADRI Annual Report 2020—69

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Centre for Urban Water, Sri Lanka
https://www.curwsl.org/• Expenditure for relief (costborne for the relief requirementsof the flood affected people,
which is usually born by therelevant governmental authorities
such as Disaster Management
Centre, National Disaster Relief
Services
Centre,Municipal
councils, Urban Councils andDivisional Secretariats)
There are more types of damages
that can be seen in a disaster,which are not easily captured bya physical property, such as thevalue of a (lost) human life andthe extent of a disease outbreakwhich is due to the cascading
effect of the flood event.

During the year concluded an extensive report on
the damage assessment on past and future flood
scenarios.
Introduction and the structure of the report
1.1. Introduction to the damage assessment
reportThis report will explain the methods adopted by
the Centre for Urban Water (CUrW) for the loss
estimations for the simulated past and future flood
scenarios. The losses will generally occur in thefollowing aspects.
•

Structural damage for buildings (Damages tothe building structural elements such as walls/
roof)

•

Content damage for buildings (Damages tothe things inside the building such as sofas/
television/refrigerator)•

Damagestotheeconomic
activities(Damages occur from not conducting the
economic activities such as interruptions tobusinesses etc.)•

Damages to the prominent infrastructure(such as bridges, roads, culverts, telephone
connection points and poles, electricalinfrastructure, flood protection structures etc.)•

Currently, CUrW adopts damage functions
prepared for the structural damages and thecontent damages, which were prepared based on
the field surveys carried out by the internal staff of
CUrW, in order to calculate the respective
damages. At the same time, CUrW seeks
opportunities to develop relevant damage curves
for the other types of the aforementioned damage
categories,
throughpossiblepartnerships,
methodologies and workarounds.
1.2. Structure of the report The rest of the reportwill initially explain the concept behind damage
assessment, the methodology adopted for the
structural
damagecalculation
andthedevelopment of the damage curves for the
structural damages, the methodology ofdevelopment of the content damage functions,computational methods for the damage calculationand how CUrW has adopted rapid calculation
methodologies for the damage assessments.

Damages to the vehicles

GADRI Annual Report 2020—70

Prof. Srikantha Herath
Director
E-mail: herath.unu@gmail.com

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

2. Damage assessment-concept
2.1. Introduction Flood damages are assessedconsidering the flood hazard, exposure of theassets (buildings in this case) and the vulnerabilityof the exposed structures, by the following formula.
Here, the flood hazard is expressed by the floodinundation maps, which are often the results of theflood simulation exercises. Flood inundation maps
for a particular flood scenario produce two important
information: flood extent (area of inundation) andthe flood depth at the inundated locations.
Exposure is the placement of the assets, buildingsin this case (if the people at risk is concerned, theexposure would be the peoples' locations).
Alongside, the building properties are considered inthis stage such as structural properties for the
structural damage calculation and the building use
categories for the content damage calculations.
There are five structural damage categories andnine building use categories considered inassessing damages in this study, as mentioned in
the Section 3. These exposure maps are available
in the form of vectors (shapefiles), having attributesof building structural fabrication and the buildinguse, for each of the individual buildings.
Vulnerability is contextualized by the vulnerability(damage) functions and the base damage values
for each of the building exposure category as
discussed in section 3. These functions can bemodelled in the Geographic Information System(GIS) modelling software, in order to calculate thedamage for a given flood. Figure 1 demonstrates
the concepts of hazard and exposure, where theflood map (hazard) isoverlaid
withthebuilding footprint layer
to show the exposureof the building to thefloods.

methodology of derivation of the damage curves
and many more information is presented in the
aforementioned study, only a summary of themethodology will be explained under this section.
The full paper is annexed to this report at Annex
7.1. 3.1.
Data collection
For this study, data is collected as a questionnaire
survey in the flood affected areas for the recent
flood events. There have been 297 respondents,
who are mainly adults who have a clear memory of
the recent flood events. Data on the replacement
cost and the repair cost of the damaged structural
items were collected in this survey, alongside withthe flood depths and the type of the building in therelevant flood event.
The basic types of the buildings are taken as (A)Unreinforced masonry bearing walls, (B) Concrete
frame with unreinforced masonry fill walls, (C)Wooden structures, (D) Commercial buildings as
identified by the World Agency of Planetary
Monitoring and Earthquake Risk Reduction(WAPMERR) and as documented by United
Nations office of Disaster Risk Reduction(UNISDR). Here, it is assumed that the commercial
buildings are built with concrete frames andunreinforced masonry walls as well, however thefinishes and the furnishes would be different fromthe general residential buildings. Furthermore, one
more building category was identified as (E) Watta,
in order to comply to the local conditions. The
category Watta usually contain densely populated
dwelling units often made with temporary building
materials or with unreinforced masonry bearing

3.
Derivationofdamage functions forstructural damage
The damage functions
forthestructural
damages are directly
drawn from the study
from Komolafe et al.,2018, which studies
the floods in Sri Lanka
for the 2010 floods.
Sinceacomprehensive
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National Center for Research on Earthquake
Engineering (NCREE), Chinese Taipei
https://www.ncree.org/

Fig. 1: The extended NCREE building

The Vertical Addition of the Taipei Research Buildingof the National Center for Research on Earthquake
Engineering

Preparations began for the National Center for
Research on Earthquake Engineering (NCREE)
Taipei research building and the large-scale
structural laboratory in March 1990. The groundbreaking started in August 1993, and the building
use permit was obtained in December 1997. The
original research building consisted of six levels
above ground along with a basement level. Afterthe official opening of NCREE, to meet the needsof earthquake disaster prevention research andapplications, business increased dramatically, thenumber of staff in NCREE increased from 24 tomore than 200 people. Fortunately, the founding
director, Professor Chau-Shioung Yeh and his
team foresaw the future growth of NCREE anddesigned the foundation and structure based on thestandards for 12-level reinforced concrete (RC)buildings, allowing for the possibility of future
additions to the building.

KYB from Japan, and the Well Link Industry from
Taiwan, allowing the NCREE research building to
be onethat integrates various seismic
technologies. The construction of the extended
NCREE research building was finally started on
October 23, 2019, with the topping out ceremonyon May 27, 2020. On November 9, 2020, theconstruction was officially completed (Fig. 1) andthe opening ceremony was held (Fig. 2). The
extended building responds to three visions asfollows:(1)

Research space: a comfortable research
environment and office space is provided forcolleagues of the NCREE, the Department of Civil
Engineering, National Taiwan University (NTU),
andthe
NCREE-NTUCE
Joint
Artificial
Intelligence Research Center.

(2)

Technology display: dampers, seismicallyisolated raised floor, seismic resistant ceiling and
other
smart
disasterprevention
relatedtechnologies are installed on-site for display inthe research building, and the exhibition spacefor future research results of NCREE and theNTU Department of Civil Engineering is also
provided. The venue is expected to be an
exchange center for international earthquake
engineering disaster prevention and mitigation
technology.

(3) Experimental specimen: the extended building
itself is a large specimen. The installed multiple
sensors will monitor the structure and theimmediate response of key facilities, which isvaluable to verify the effectiveness and accuracyof NCREE’s research results in the future .

After understanding the reasons and preliminary
ideas for the vertical addition of the researchbuilding, the president of Ruentex Group, YenLiang Yin agreed to donate the vertical addition
project. The assessment of the vertical addition
suggested that an additional steel structure design
could be added up to the thirteenth floor. In
addition, the vertical addition project adopted the
NCREE’s patented buckling-restrained braces andsteel panel dampers. Donations of velocitydependent dampers were also received from the
US Taylor Devices and Sinodynamics Enterprise,
GADRI Annual Report 2020—72

Prof. Shyh-Jiann Hwang
Director-GeneralE-mail: sjhwang@ncree.narl.org.tw

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Fig. 2. The opening ceremony washosted by Dr. Chung-Ming Kuan
(President of NTU, left), Dr. KuangChong Wu (President of NARLabs,
center) and Dr. Yen-Liang Yin(President of the Ruentex Group,
right).

Service platform of earthquake engineering for offshore wind turbine and multi-axial seismic test
National Center for Research on Earthquake
Engineering (NCREE) established the offshore windturbine (OWT) support structure and multi-axial
seismic test (MAST) system platform in the Tainan
Laboratory. With the outstanding facilities, NCREE iscapable of implementing dynamic test on larger
scale OWT supporting structure model and seabedground model to verify the dynamic response andsoil-structure interaction of OWT structures.
Furthermore, in order to maintain the functionality ofwind turbine under seismic hazard, the seismic
resistance of the critical parts needs to be testified aswell. The table motion of the MAST system equipped

in Tainan laboratory is capable of reproducing floor
response, so that it’s suitable for testifying nonstructural components. NCREE provides both
hardware and software services to develop
experimental technique for OWT supporting
structure, and will collaborate with research facilities,
industries, and the government to establish thedomestic design guideline of the supporting structure
and critical parts of the wind turbines.

Fig. 3. Multi-axial seismic test (MAST) system

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GADRI Annual Report — Asia

National Science and Technology Center for Disaster
Reduction (NCDR), Chinese Taipei
https://www.ncdr.nat.gov.tw/

Opening ceremony of 2020 ITW on 1 September 2020

2020 International Training Workshop - Youth
Leadership Camp on Disaster Risk Management

Throughscenario
simulation
tohands-onoperations, the National Science and Technology
Center for Disaster Reduction (NCDR), the Tzu Chi
Foundation (Tzu Chi) and International Cooperation
and Development Fund (Taiwan ICDF) collaborate
to organize the 2020 International Training
Workshop - Youth Leadership Camp on Disaster
Risk Management (2020 ITW) focusing on capacity
building for potential your leaders in disaster
preparedness.

There were 82 participants who study in diverse
fields of disciplines in Taiwan are originally comingfrom 21 countries, including Belize, Bangladesh,
Colombia, France, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduran,
Hungary, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar,
Nepal, The Philippines, Paraguay, Poland, St
Vincent and Grenadines, South African, Turkey,
Taiwan and Viet Nam.

with challenges, 5) Streamlining the data, photo andinformation collected for situation assessment on
cross-cutting issues for integrated communications,6) Mobilizing the tangible and intangible resources
for emergency preparedness, 7) Integrating teamefforts on the scenario simulation for operations,and 8) Delivering effective and efficient operation.

The participants tried to operate online disaster
information systems that designed and developedby NCDR, to know how to integrate multiple
information for emergency decision making as well
as applying these systems to develop an overview
of affected area. All participants were divided into 6
teams to conduct assigned missions which reflectpossible difficulties or situations amid each phase of
a developing disaster.

The expected goals of the 4-day training program
are aimed at participants’ capacity building on: 1)
Understanding of disasters from impacts tooperations, 2) Exploring the needs of the affected
people , 3) Picturing the "situation awareness" after
a scenario earthquake which could trigger a seriesof aftermaths, 4) learning decision making to deliver
feasible solutions and allocate resources for coping

GADRI Annual Report 2020—74

Ms. Kiri Chan
Assistant Researcher
E-mail: khc@ncdr.nat.gov.tw

GADRI Annual Report — Asia

Publish the “Plant Back Better Toolkit”

Based on the APEC project of “Capacity Building andEmergency
PreparednessforSustainable
Development at Agricultural Communities through"Plant Back Better" (PBB) Initiatives” (Jan 2018 ~Dec 2019) that was implemented by NCDR and
APEC Emergency Preparedness Capacity Building
Center (EPCC).

The team has been working with the Philippines
based on public private partnership to conduct a pilot
project - the Best Practice at Barangay Lanit, Jaro
Iloilo City, the Philippines, and published the “Plant
Back Better Toolkit” in 2020. More information about
Plant Back Better, please refer to:
APEC Emergency Preparedness Capacity Building
Center:https://www.apec-epcc.org/programs-and-events/
programs/plant-back-better-pbb/

2020 ITW function teams worked for scenario simulation

GADRI Annual Report 2020—75

GADRI Annual Report — AsiaJapan

GADRI Annual Report 2020—76

GADRI Annual Report — JapanJapan

GADRI Annual Report 2020—77

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Japan and Oceania
Research Center for Potential Development of Disaster Prevention, Akita University
Asian Disaster Reduction Center (ADRC)
Center for Disaster Management Informatics Research, Ehime University
International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM) under the auspices of UNESCO
International Consortium on Landslides (ICL)
Crisis & Security Management Research Center, Kagawa University
Research and Education Center for Natural Hazards, Kagoshima University

Institute of Nature and Environmental Technology, Kanazawa University
Research Center for Social Safety Science, Faculty of Safety Science, Kansai University
Research and Development Center of Fire and Environmental Safety (RDFES), The University of Kita Kyushu
Research Center for Urban Safety and Security (RCUSS), Kobe University
Implementation Research and Education System Center for Reducing Disaster Risk (IRESC), Kumamoto
University
Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance (IDiARRG), Research Institute for DisasterArea Reconstruction, Kwansei Gakuin University
Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University
Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies (GSGES), Kyoto University
Disaster Risk Reduction Research Center, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University
Research Institute for Applied Mechanics (RIAM), Kyushu University
Center of Environmental Science and Disaster Mitigation for Advanced Research (CEDAR), Muroran Instituteof Technology
Advanced Disaster Prevention Engineering Center (ADPEC), Nagoya Institute of Technology
Disaster Mitigation Research Center (DMRC), Nagoya University
National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience (NIED)

Research Institute for Natural Hazards & Disaster Recovery, Niigata University
Research Initiative for Natural Disaster Prevention of Oil and Gas Spill in Industrial Parks, Graduate School ofEngineering, Osaka University
Graduate School of Human Sciences, Faculty of Human Sciences, Osaka University
Frontier Research Center for Natural Disaster Mitigation, Ritsumeikan University
Institute of Disaster Mitigation for Urban Cultural Heritage (R-DMUCH), Ritsumeikan University
Disaster Prevention Research Center for Island Regions, University of the Ryukyus
International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University
Center for Urban Earthquake Engineering (CUEE), Tokyo Institute of Technology
Earthquake Research Institute (ERI), The University of TokyoGADRI Annual Report 2020—78

GADRI Annual Report — JapanGADRI Annual Report 2020—79

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk
Management under the auspices of UNESCO(ICHARM), Japan
http://www.icharm.pwri.go.jp/
International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk
Management (ICHARM) shared excerpts of abooklet that was completed during 2020. The
booklet on Collection of Critical Situations during
Flood Emergency Response was by Miho Ohara
and Masakazu Fujikane.
The International Centre for Water Hazard and Risk
Management (ICHARM) under the auspices of
UNESCO has published a booklet entitled“Collection of Critical Situations during Flood
Emergency Response,” aiming to improve theemergency
response
capacities
oflocal
governments for more effective management offlood disasters. The collection consists of the maincontent, “local government response,” and an
appendix, “local government response under
COVID-19.” It is downloadable in PDF file format onthewebsite(https://www.pwri.go.jp/icharm/
special_topic/20200625_flood_response_collection_e.html).
Several local governments in Japan have recently
published after-action review reports (post-disaster
reports), in which they review their emergency
response during a disaster and identify lessons toimprove their efforts based on their disaster
experience. These reports include plenty of wise
feedback from personnel members who offer theircontrition and improvement proposals about cases
where the response to a disaster did not go well, of
which many of the case study examples serve asadvice to other local governments on how to combat
disasters. Indeed, there are reports of similar criticalsituations
experienced by numerous local
governments. And, many of the other affected local
governments would doubtless express regret if they
did not know about these cases in advance.
Defining critical situations in which local government
officers have a hard time making sensible decisions
because they panic, don’t know what to do, areconfused or in dilemma, etc., during an emergency
response effort, ICHARM collected typical criticalsituations from the review reports of past flood
disasters in Japan. As a result, some 500 cases
offering instructive lessons to be learned werecollected from the 2,000 or so pages in the 30
documents read. The booklet features 28 typicalcases of critical situations, each printed on a twopage spread with lessons in terms of “Facilities,”“Procedure,” and “Skill” to assist local government
officers in taking more practical measures.
In emergency response during a flood disaster amid
the COVID-19 crisis, it is important to conduct
infection prevention measures in guiding residents’evacuation and admitting them to evacuation
centers, in addition to the measures taken inconventional flood disaster response. To this end,
the “Appendix for local government response under
COVID-19” describes 28 possible critical situations
and necessary countermeasures in case of a flood
disaster under the plague in terms of “Facilities,”“Procedure,” “Public relations” and “During disaster
response.” Here, the classification of “Public
relations” is used instead of “Skill” raised in the maincontent “local government response” as fomenting
the “Skill” requires time under the urgent risks offlooding under COVID-19. Nevertheless, continuing
to push the “public relations” perspective will help tofoment “human skills”. The appendix refers toseveral guidelines issued by the Cabinet Office andthe Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan,
and“A guideline for the creation ofcountermeasures against flood disasters during apandemic situation (COVID-19)”, which was coauthored by Associate Professor KOYAMA Maki ofGifu University and Professor KANBARA Sakiko of
the University of Kochi.
Since flood emergency response under COVID-19
is new experience for local governments, thispublication aims to provide some hints for them toplan necessary countermeasures considering theirneeds and situations, including the prevalence ofthe disease among the residents.
We hope that this publication can help local
government officers to cope with disasters, not assomething distant from their reality but as their
immediate problem, and enhance the response
capacity of their organizations against disasters.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—80

Prof. Toshio Koike
E-mail: t-koike@pwri.go.jp

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Figure 1 Cover pages of the main content and appendix

Figure 2 Sample page of the appendix on local government response under COVID-19

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GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Center for Disaster Countermeasures (CDC)
The University of Kitakyushu, Japan
http://www.env.kitakyu-u.ac.jp/ja/shoubou/

plants. The second presentation was regarding thenegative effects of the use of firefighting foams on theinvestigation of the origin and cause of fire. Bothpresentations suggested that the negative effects ofthe soap-based firefighting foam were small both on
the harvesting of agricultural products and the fire
investigation the country.

Fast permeability of the firefighting
agent (left) relative to water (right)

The Center for Disaster Countermeasures has
involved in disseminating knowledge on theenvironmentally friendly firefighting foam that wasdeveloped by a joint venture of Kitakyushu City
Government, private companies, and the University of
Kitakyushu. This year, our center held a one-day
seminar on this firefighting foam on Dec 19 and 25
local firefighters participated in the event. Knowledge
on the scientific mechanism of extinguishing fire,physical properties of this soap-based firefighting
foam, ecological impacts when the foam was released
to the environment and skills for effective use of thefoam were shared among the participants.
The seminar started at the main factory of
Shabondama Soap Co. which was the producer of thefirefighting foam. The participants joined a guided tourof the factory and then conducted an experiment thatshowed improved permeability of the firefighting foam
relative to water. Then the members moved to
Kitakyushu Science and Research Park and Prof.
UEZU Kazuya gave a lecture on the mechanism of
extinguishing fire and how this firefighting foam
improved the efficiency of heat removal. Prof.
KAWANO Tomonori gave the next lecture on themethods for measuring ecological impacts offirefighting agents and the results from his research.
These lectures were followed by two presentations by
the firefighters of the Kitakyushu Fire and Disaster
Management Bureau. The first presentation was about
the research results that compared effects of spraying
different types of firefighting foams at tomato and egg

GADRI Annual Report 2020—82

Lecture on physical characteristics of thefirefighting foam by Prof. Uezu

Prof. Takaaki Kato
E-mail: tkato@kitakyu-u.ac.jp

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Disaster Prevention Research Institute(DPRI) Kyoto University, Japan
http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/

Typhoon Disasters in Japan in 2019
By Dr. Tetsuya Takemi
In recent years, East Asia and Japan has sufferedfrom severe damages due to heavy rainfalls andtyphoons; e.g., the heavy rainfall in northern Kyushu
in July 2017, the heavy rainfall in July 2018, theheavy rainfall due to Typhoon Hagibis (2019), andthe rainfall event in 2020. After these events, In July
2020, heavy rainfall occurred throughout theJapanese islands, especially in the western andcentral parts of Japan (figure below, showing thetotal rainfall amount during the first 10 days in July2020) The record-breaking rainfall caused widespread flooding and landslides, leading to severe
damages. A special research program on thedisasters spawned by the heavy rainfall that
occurred in Kyushu, in the western part of Japan,
has been launched, funded by Japan Society for
Promotion of Sciences. A number of scientists who
belong to the GADRI member institutes in Japan has
joined this special program, and has been
conducting investigations on the meteorologicalfactors for the occurrence of this heavy rainfall event,the mechanisms and computational modeling oflandslides, the mechanisms for the occurrence offlooding, analysis of damages to houses, and theevacuation behaviors during the event. The recordbreaking rainfall amount was due to significant
amount of moisture content in the atmosphere, withvery saturated and unstable conditions, which wasformed along the Baiu front. The study will besummarized into a report published in March 2021.
Furthermore, the impacts of climate change on theoccurrence of recent heavy rainfall events were
investigated with the use of dynamical downscaling
approach, showing the increase of rainfall amounts
due to the increase in the moisture content. Lessons
learnt from the findings of the special research
program on the heavy rainfall event in July 2020
would contribute to increasing people’s awareness ofconsequences of extreme weather events and toclimate change adaptation and mitigation strategy.

Dr. Tetsuya Takemi
E-mail: takemi@storm.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp

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GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Disaster Prevention Research Institute(DPRI) Kyoto University, Japan
http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/

2019 DPRI Annual Meeting, Kyoto University, Japan
20 to 21February 2020

Prof. Andrew Collins - Honoured with the 6th DPRI Award
Kyoto University, Japan

Prof. Andrew Collins, Chair of the GADRIBoard of Directors from the Northumbria
University, UK was recognized as therecipient of the 6th DPRI Award for
Outstanding Contributions to Research and
Education The Award was presented by
Prof. Manabu Hashimoto, Director, DPRI,
Kyoto University on 20th February 2020
during the DPRI Annual Meeting held at
DPRI, Obaku Plaza, Kyoto, Japan between
20th to 21st of February 2020.

To commemorate the occasion, Prof. Collins
delivered a presentation on the "Progress
and Prospect for Action Data in People
Centred Disaster Risk Reduction andResilience Building".

Further details can be found at GADRI
homepage.
http://gadri.net/
resources/2020/03/test.html

GADRI Annual Report 2020—84

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Disaster Prevention Research Institute(DPRI) Kyoto University, Japan
http://www.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/

GADRI 3rd Open Discussion Forum

Changing Expectations of Natural Hazards: Lessons
from Recent Disasters
DPRI, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan on 26 February 2020
The GADRI 3rd Open Discussion Forum
took place at the Collaborative Research
Hub-Conference Hall 301, Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto
University, Uji Campus, Kyoto, Japan on
26th February 2020.
The Open Discussion Forum is organized:•

to introduce GADRI activities, andthe members of GADRI Board of
Directors•

to facilitate discussion between GADRI members and important stakeholders in disaster risk reduction;and•to find directions for GADRI to proceed in thenext few years and provide opportunity for participants to interact with the presenters.

The 3rd Open Discussion Forum focussed on the"Changing Expectations of Natural Hazards: Lessons
from Recent Disasters". Theme of the session discussed about changing hazards –and characterised
briefly what are the changes and what have notchanged over the last decade in a particular area. Are
these changes caused due to actual hazard changing
or due to societal fact? What sort of background isbehind the changes that we see now and we expect in

the next few decades.
Speakers within GADRI and DPRI presented theirviews on the subject.
•

Prof. Andrew Collins, Leader, DDN, Northumbria
University, UK talked on Revisiting Infectious Disease Risk Reduction in the Context of Current
Emergencies;•

Prof. Gretchen Kalonji, Dean, Institute for Disaster Management and Reconstruction (IDMR),
Sichuan University, China presented on the Disaster Health Sciences at IDMR – Backgroundand News from the Front in Hubei;•

Prof. Eiichi Nakakita, DPRI, Kyoto University presented on the Perspectives on Disaster Related
Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation in Japan (II);•Mr. Kazuhiko Fukami, International Centre for
Water Hazard and Risk Management (ICHARM)
under the auspices of UNESCO, Japan talked on
the Japanese Policy Evolution Responding to the
Recent Catastrophic Floods.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—85

GADRI Annual Report — Japan•

Dr. Tom de Groeve, European Commission,
Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC), Italy Understanding Risk: the key to preparedness and crisis management; and•Prof. Charles Scawthorn, PEER, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley, USA presentation was on
the Wildland-Urban Fire—the risk and its mitigation (online).

•

Prof. Jim Mori, DPRI, Kyoto University, on earthquakes and volcanoes .

The Panel session covered the following topics:•

On infectious disease risks – if we focus on thehazard, the exposure factors are to do with places
and with your vulnerabilities including the biologicalsusceptibility to the hazards. There are two dynamics to the situation: one is the physical proximity to
the hazard and the other is the susceptibility to thehazard. The change in the hazard pathogen, is a
result of the change in its environment. What we doknow is that this is something which we could recognize as an extensive risk. Because as you cansee – what happens in one part of the world immediately is an issue to another part of the world aswell. It is completely interconnected and could be
regarded as extensive risk.

•

On adaptation - adaptation requires populations tomove around but then it increases multi-risk levels
as well – risk to more marginal environments which
are more prone to flooding, more prone to perhaps
nutritional insecurities, and that can raise the vulnerability levels. If we think about multi hazards, aswell as multi risks, and the one which is usually leftout and which is actually critical in looking at is theinfectious disease risk, particular the old infectious
diseases; what we call endemic diseases - is often
associated with areas with lot of conflict. Anotherfactor is conflict risks reduction and other forms ofdisaster risk reduction which could work together.
Ultimately vulnerability seems to be the biggest risk
we all face.

•

On urbanization – urbanization enhance vulnerability – for example increased intensity in rainfall andurban flooding issues which are quite prominent in
the recent years around the world. Not only the factthat the urbanization is increasing, this exacerbatedby massive infrastructure development which inturn leads to poor planning or lack of insufficientattention to planning or resilience against urban
flooding. That could be significant in urban areas.

•

On health risks, one of the huge health risks is the
air pollution especially in industrialized countries. It
is a human induced risk. It is having an horrendous impact on many aspects of human health especially for children. If that problem is not drastically dealt with more effectively, there could be another looming health disaster.

•In the area flood management and especially inthis case dam construction, etc. - during the pastfew decades, we have encountered with manychanges. Few factors that have greatly contributed
are the limitation of budget and human resources.
With the Internet, people have easy access to information and communication among the researchersand decision-makers have become scarce especially when decisions are concerning multistakeholders and multi-disciplinaries. In the past, if
it is a problem in engineering, a decision could bereached just by consulting the specialist of rivermanagement or river engineering. Now with administrations, there are so many limitations andmany administrative constraints. Another factor iscommunication with the local people who are residing in the areas affected by the disaster and it isimportant to understand the situation from theirstandpoint. They do have much important information that are useful for research too. Global initiatives such as the Sendai Framework, therefore,
are needed to grip on such communications andshare data.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—86

GADRI Annual Report — Japan••

In the area flood management and especially inthis case dam construction, etc. - during the pastfew decades, we have encountered with manychanges. Few factors that have greatly contributed are the limitation of budget and human resources. With the Internet, people have easy access to information and communication among
the researchers and decision-makers have become scarce especially when decisions are concerning
multi-stakeholders
andmultidisciplinaries. In the past, if it is a problem in engineering, a decision could be reached just by
consulting the specialist of river management orriver engineering. Now with administrations,
there are so many limitations and many administrative constraints. Another factor is communication with the local people who are residing in theareas affected by the disaster and it is importantto understand the situation from their standpoint.
They do have much important information thatare useful for research too. Global initiatives suchas the Sendai Framework, therefore, are needed
to grip on such communications and share data.
Regarding the changing nature of disaster andhazards by rainfall – there seen been serious
hazardous disasters caused by heavy rainfall. It

has seen gradual or sometime rapid changes
due to climate change. For example, we haveexperienced and seen an increase in rainfall intensity, increase in total volume, length andamounts which in turn induce inundation in larger
scale. Future projections of heavy rainfall follow
the characteristics of global warming simulations.
•Hazards are not changing much but the rest of
the situations have changed - the risk is being in
the intersection of natural hazards, society, andtechnology or the natural built social environment. Global warming may be changing all thatand certainly this, senses, severity in frequency
of probable cyclones and probably going to increase.

•

The world population is increasing and it will
peak later this century. Increased population
extending into flood prone areas or wildlife interface, volcanic areas create a problem. Rapid urbanization, and people moving and farmers becoming industrialized, thereby creating voice forlabourers. Then they cannot live on the farms,
hence move to cities, and cause an enormous
increase in towns.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—87

GADRI Annual Report — Japan•On changing expectations of natural hazards; in acertain way it is not because of the hazard itself
that has change, but also due to climate change.
Perhaps climate change is aggravating certain
natural hazards. But a lot of it depends on more
exposure, complicity, interconnectedness andinterdependent, including social media and social
network and connectivity. For example, with thesocial media, people are more aware of what ishappening everywhere. It is easy to spread trueor false panic, as we have seen now about thecorona virus.

•

Another important fact is that mitigation does pay.
It is essential to prepare for design and beyond.
One of the issues is resources. Decision making
is slow and it will be - as may science. Theseissues are all very important.

•

This all comes down to understanding the risks risks is what we are looking at and what canaffect and it is a combination of the hazard,
vulnerability, and exposure. We need to moveregulations for example, require the governments
to disclose information to its citizens although we
may not have all the answers. How can wesystematically extract important knowledge fromthe type of events we have encountered?
•

Within the GADRI community, if it is possible tofind a mechanism to extract such kind of
information, even as an abstract, and collect dataon the type of event, for example how it
happened, what was implemented, what are thesuccesses and what are the failures, lessons
learned, etc. and share among members.

•

GADRI could play an important global role byhaving a more exclusive focus on science policy
issues that are having to deal with disaster risk
reduction. The challenge would be how to makethe long, detailed papers on science policy
lessons bite size and comprehensible. It is aninteresting challenge and GADRI could reallymake a difference.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—88

GADRI Annual Report — JapanGADRI Annual Report 2020—89

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

Institute of Disaster Mitigation for Urban Cultural Heritage (RDMUCH), Ritsumeikan University Japan
http://www.r-dmuch.jp/en/

Pic. 1 The presenters, moderators, and staffs of
the webinar
The Institute of Disaster Mitigation for Urban Cultural
Heritage at Ritsumeikan University (R-DMUCH) has
been working and focusing on organizing
international symposiums, training, researches,
information dissemination, and building bothscientific and practitioner networks, in the field of
disaster risk management and of disaster mitigationof cultural heritage.
The “UNESCO Chair International Training Course
on Disaster Risk Management of Cultural
Heritage” (ITC) started from 2006 as one of ourimportant educational activities. Until 2019, 152professionals from 62 countries have been trained
through this annual course.
Unfortunately, “on site” ITC 2020 is canceled
because of COVID-19 and as the alternative
projects, we implemented Webinar series “Capacity
Building for Disaster Risk Management of Cultural
Heritage: Challenges and Opportunities in Post
COVID Times” on 27th June and 4th July 2020, andwe conducted the Workshop on “Good Practices for
Disaster Risk Management of Cultural Heritage” forour former ITC participants through 8th to 10th
October 2020.
The webinar series aimed to discuss the future
directions of cultural heritage management throughpresentations by resource persons of ITC. Webinar
was structured with two parts. The first webinar
focused on “Disaster mitigation and Preparedness”
and the second webinar focused on “Disaster
response and recovery”. There were more than one
hundred participants in each webinar.

Pic.2 The presenters, commentators, andmoderators of the workshop
ITC since 2006 and worked towards building astronger network among the ITC resource persons
and the former ITC participants. The six presentersand one Exemplary presenter were selected throughthe review of the 27 applications that were
submitted. Two presenters were selected for theBest Practice Award. Approximately 150 persons
participated in the workshop days. A video message
from Prof. Kenzo Toki, a founding father of ITC, andvideo messages of former ITC participants
memories of the ITC program were shared during
the workshop. The workshop was very successful inproviding us very useful feedback on theachievements as well as needs that we aim toaddress through future ITC initiatives in coming
years.
The webinar series and the workshop wereorganized through close collaboration with ICCROM
and with support of ICOM, ICOMOS/ICORP andvarious national and international organizations. We
will continue this outreach activities anddissemination of our research outcomes to theinternational society.
The details of the webinar series and workshop, andCall for application for the ITC2021 will beannounced at our website:
http://www.r-dmuch.jp/en/project/itc.html

The workshop aimed to showcase various projects
on disaster risk management of cultural heritage
undertaken by the former participants after ITC in
every year. It also aimed to review the activities of
GADRI Annual Report 2020—90

Prof. Takeyuki Okubo
Director
E-mail: rekibou@st.ritsumei.ac.jp

GADRI Annual Report — Japan

This year also Ritsumeikan University
cooperated with the Japanese experts. So, thetrainees could learn a study of risk
management for both immovable and movablecultural heritage from last disasters in Japanand comprehensive countermeasures andapproaches. As the details of the course, thetrainees learned the disaster risk managementof cultural heritage from the various kind ofdisasters, and the emergency response formovable cultural heritage through the lecturesin the institute, the practical exercises in the
Kyoto National Museum, and site visits on thetemples and the Ponto-cho district in Kyoto. In
addition, they learned about the flood disasteroccurred in the Takeda, Asago-shi and
Hirafuku, Sayo-cho
and also a long-term
recovery process in Kobe area from the Great

Hanshin-Awaji (Kobe) Earthquake in 1995.

The training course is organized in cooperation
with the UNESCO, ICCROM, ICOM, ICOMOS/ICORP and relevant institutions of thegovernment of Japan. We will continue thisoutreach activities and dissemination of ourresearch outcomes to the international society.

Call for application for the ITC2020 will beannounced at our website:
http://www.r-dmuch.jp/en/project/itc.html

A Site Visit to Kiyomizu-dera World Heritage Site, Kyoto

GADRI Annual Report 2020—91

GADRI Annual Report — JapanGADRI Annual Report — Japan

Earthquake Research Institute (ERI)The University of Tokyo, Japan
http://www.eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp/en/
The mission of Earthquake
Research Institute, the Universityof Tokyo, since its beginning in
1925, is to promote scientificresearch on earthquakes andvolcanic eruptions and to develop
methods for mitigating related
disasters. To achieve this goal,
about 80 faculty members withother staff of ERI conduct wide
variety of research such as studies
on the basis of geophysicalobservations in Japan and abroad,structure and dynamics of the
Earth’sinterior
which
drive
earthquakes
andvolcanic
Seabed seismographs, pressure sensors to investigate conditions inside
eruptions,multidisciplinary
New Zealand's largest fault | Stuff.co.nz
research of science and literatureon historical earthquakes with Historiographicalbehaviors. Comparative studies between these
Institute, real-time delivery and analysis of large
subduction plate boundary zones will significantly
amount of seismic data using Science Information
improve
ourunderstandingofgeneration
Network, earthquake hazard assessment bymechanisms of megathrust earthquakes. Our
merging big data and high performancecollaboration with New Zealand scientists also
computation.
contributes to disaster mitigation programs in New
Zealand. Our studies and results have been well
Regarding the international collaboration, ERI has
introduced by an NPO, East Coast LAB (http://
signed agreements with about 20 foreign
eastcoastlab.org.nz), and coastal communities areorganizations, and conducts or participates
becoming much more aware of the importance ofcollaborative research projects such as International
preparing for earthquakes and tsunamis. The
Muography Cooperative Research Organization,
deployed ocean bottom seismometers will be
Next generation Neutrino Science Organization,
recovered in 2021. We anticipate that ourinternational marine geophysical observation
observations will reveal, for the first time, details of
networks such as Pacific Array. ERI invites foreign
the offshore seismicity in the central part of theresearchers as visiting faculty or researcher,
Hikurangi subduction margin.
educates graduate or internship students fromcountries outside Japan, and organizes international
Articles on NZ research activities:
summer schools for both undergraduate andhttps://www.eastcoastlab.org.nz/home/article/189/backgraduate students. Every year, more than 100-to-back-voyages-focus-on-hikurangi-subduction-zoneinternational researchers and students study in ERI.
?t=featured&s=1
Research activities during 2020, particularly thosewith domestic fieldwork or being conducted
overseas , have been limited due to the current
COVID-19 pandemic. However, we successfully
deployed a seafloor geophysical observation
network along the central part of Hikurangi
subduction margin, the North Island of New ZealandProf. Kenji Satakein November 2020. The network consists of 10
Director
ocean bottom seismometers from our institute, and12 bottom pressure recorders from GNS Science,
E-mail: director@eri.u-tokyo.ac.jp
New Zealand. The Nankai and Hikurangi subduction
margins show substantial similarities in seismogenic
GADRI Annual Report 2020—92

GADRI Annual Report — Oceania

Oceania

Australia

Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University (ANU)

Australia

College of Health & Human Sciences, Charles Darwin University

Australia

Humanitarian, Emergency and Disaster Management, College of Indigenous
Futures, Arts and Society, Charles Darwin University

Australia

Centre for Disaster Studies, College of Science and Engineering, James Cook
University

Australia

Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, School of Engineering, The
University of Newcastle

Australia

Sustainability Research Centre, University of Sunshine Coast

Australia

Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology

Australia

Humanitarian & Development Research Initiative (HADRI), School of Social
Sciences and Psychology, Western Sydney University

Australia

School pf Earth and Environmental Sciences (SMAH), University of Wollongong

New Zealand

GNS Science

GADRI Annual Report 2020—93

GADRI Annual Report — Oceania

Centre for Disaster Studies (CDS)James Cook University, Australia
https://www.jcu.edu.au/centre-for-disaster-studies

Consistent with the significant impacts of
COVID-19 globally, the fieldwork/researchand staffing capacity of the Centre forDisaster studies was limited in 2020. In
adapting to new, changing, and challenging
environments, there was a greater
emphasis on applied research andexpandingresilience
approachesinteaching disaster management online.

With the early proliferation of the pandemic
in the first half of 2020, the Centre
undertook an online survey to assess
Community Awareness of COVID-19 inAustralia, to understand the levels ofawareness,
information
access,preparedness, behavior, and impacts - with
implications and recommendations for
current and future pandemic planning.
From over 1250 respondents an infographicof preliminary results was publicly released(via traditional and social media) withfindings widely distributed to emergency
services, health and community.
Final
results and analysis have been integrated
into a book chapter that is currently inpublication.

Reflecting the expansion and value of online
learning the Centre was also recognised for
its active contribution in the development
and teaching of “Disaster Resilience for a
Changing Climate Grand Challenge.
A
Queensland Virtual STEM Academy –Thuringowa
Highcollaboration
withTownsville City Council and James Cook
University which was declared the 2020
Winner of the Resilient Australia National
School Award.

Book chapters published during this time reflect
some of the more practical and socio-economic
considerations of planning for disasters with a casestudy approach.

•

Gurtner Y & King, D. (2021). “Travelling Safely
in an Unsafe World – A Shared Responsibility”
In Wilks, J., Pendergast, D., Leggatt, P., &Morgan, D. (Eds) Tourist Health, Safety andWellbeing in the New Normal. Springer, New
York, 2021•

Gurtner, Y & King, D (2021) “Socio-economic
vulnerabilities to natural disasters and social
justice” in Chaiechi, T (ED) Economic Effects ofnatural Disasters: Theoretical Foundations,
Methods
andTools.
Elservierhttps://
doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-817465-4.00029-7•

King, D & Gurtner, Y (2020) “Planning for
Demographic Change and Population Loss: land
use planning for demographic change after
disasters in New Orleans, Christchurch andInnisfail” in Karacsonyi, D., Taylor, A. & Bird, D.
(Eds) Demography of Disasters: Impacts forPopulation and Place. Springer https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49920-4_6

Dr. Yetta Gurtner
E-mail: yetta.gurtner@jcu.edu.au

GADRI Annual Report 2020—94

GADRI Annual Report — Oceania

Thuringowa State High School National resilient Australia School Award

COVID study Infographic
GADRI Annual Report 2020—95

GADRI Annual Report — Oceania

GNS Science
New Zealandhttps://www.gns.cri.nz/

GNS Science is a New Zealand Government-owned
research organisation that unlocks environmental,social, cultural, and economic benefits through its
works across four science themes. They are Natural Hazards and Risks; Environment andClimate, Energy Futures; and Land and Marine
Geoscience. GNS Science employs 450 staff at fivesites in New Zealand and we can draw on a heritageof 150 years of excellence in Earth sciences.

With New Zealand sitting astride an active plateboundary, GNS Science has a national leadershiprole for monitoring and research on the causes,
risks, and impacts of geological hazards.

We have extensive scientific knowledge in Earthprocesses, and globally and nationally recognised
expertise in hazard and risk modelling, forecastingsocio-economic impacts of events, and systemmodelling of consequences and resilience options.
We apply our social science capability to increase
community resilience, improve risk communicationand develop tools for hazard preparedness.

Natural hazards and their consequences are part ofthe ‘DNA’ of New Zealand. Increasingly the risks
imposed by earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunami andlandslides are compounded by weather events andthe additional stresses of climate change. At thesame time, the impacts of hazard events areintensifying through population growth, urbanisation,and business vulnerabilities of fast-moving
consumer goods and just-in-time supply chains.
Risk is increasing and New Zealand’s ability to
manage future impacts from natural hazards isbeing tested.

earthquakes, tsunami, volcanoes, and landslides.
This world-class operation is paired with our
National Geohazards Monitoring Centre, which
provides 24/7 active monitoring of New Zealand’s
geological hazards.
Our research aims to generate critical scientificknowledge for the benefit of New Zealand and drive
its uptake and use to improve resilience to natural
hazards at national, regional, business, community
and individual levels. Our five outcome-oriented
programmes span the full value chain of information,
fromunderpinningknowledge
tobetterunderstanding New Zealand’s natural hazards,
through to risk management options to help
communities mitigate their destructive effects andadvise on policy and regulation.

We are currently revising and updating our National
Seismic Hazard Model which assesses thelikelihood and strength of earthquake shaking
occurring in various parts of New Zealand overgiven time spans. We are also part of a crossgovernment initiative that is deploying 12 DART
buoys to the north and east of New Zealand. They
are significantly boosting New Zealand’s end-to-end
arrangements for monitoring and detecting tsunamis
and issuing warnings about them.

Through its GeoNet project, GNS Science operates
a national network of instruments to monitor

Dr. Gill Jolly
Director
E-mail: g.jolly@gns.cri.na

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GADRI Annual Report — Oceania

We are also developing the capability toforecast the likely location and size ofearthquake and rainfall-induced landslides toprovide rapid information for responding
agencies and infrastructure operators.

a useful addition to our volcano monitoring
toolbox. The technique is not accurateenough yet to give a firm prediction of an
eruption happening at a particular time, nor
do it indicate the size or potential impact. But
it remains under active evaluation

For volcanoes, we are working with ouruniversity partners to assess a techniquethat uses computer analysis of volcanic
earthquakes to assess the risk of an
eruption. The technique could potentially be

Screen shot from Dr. Gary Wilson’s YouTube talk on the—The Ice cube at thebottom of the planter—TEDxScotBase—https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=rnKB7TNcmGIGADRI Annual Report 2020—97

EuropeAfricaGADRI Annual Report 2020—98

GADRI Annual Report — Europe

Austria

Center for Digital Safety and Security, Austrian Institute of Technology (AIT)Austria

Disaster Competence Network Austria (DCNA)

AustriaInternational Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, (IIASA)

Belgium

One Health Platform

Bulgaria

Department of Information Technologies and Communications, University of National and World
Economy (UNWE)

FranceBRGM (Bureau de Recherches Geologiques et Minieres)FranceCouncil of Europe

FranceInstitut Des Sciences de la Terre (ISTerre), Grenoble University

Germany

Center for Disaster Management and Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM)

Germany

Disaster Research Unit, Department of Social and Political Sciences, Freie University Berlin

Germany

Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS)

Germany

United Nations University, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)

Iceland

Earthquake Engineering Research Centre, University of Iceland

Italy

European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC)

Italy

Department of Earth Sciences, University of Florence (Universita degli Studi di Firenze)

Italy

GEM Foundation

PolandThe Main School of Fire (SGSP)

Slovakia

Faculty of Security Engineering, University of Zilina

SwedenStockholm Environment Institute (SEI)

SwedenRisk and Crisis Research Centre (RCRC), Mid Sweden University

Switzerland Global Risk Forum GRF Davos
Switzerland Faculty of Geosciences and the Environment, University of Lausanne
UK

Bournemouth University Disaster Management Centre (BUDMC)

UK

British Geological Survey

UK

Cabot Institute, University of Bristol

UK

Evidence Aid

UK

School of Business, Dept. Management, Innovation and Technology Division, University ofLeicesterUK

Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR), University College of London

UK

Loughborough Water Engineering Group (LWEG), School of Architecture, Building and Civil
Engineering, Loughborough University

UK

Global Disaster Resilience Centre, School of Art Design and Architecture, University of Huddersfield

UK

Disaster and Development Network (DDN), Department of Geography, Northumbria University

UK

Overseas Development Institute (ODI)

UK

Global Public Health, Public Health England (PHE)

UK

Centre for Disaster Resilience, University of Salford

UK

Swansea University

GADRI Annual Report 2020—99

GADRI Annual Report — Europe

Disaster Competence Network Austria (DCNA)
Austria
http://dcna.at/

2020 was marked by the COVID-19
pandemic where science, technology andinnovation is playing an essential role.
DCNA developed a repository of solutions
to mitigate the crisis, which is accessible via
website.

DCNA hosted in 2020 the Disaster ResearchDays (#DRD20). The event was organizedvirtually due to the Corona pandemic andwas held as a webinar series, taking placefrom 13th to 22nd of October. Strengthening
networking between the individual scientificdisciplines and subject areas in disastermanagement was the central topic. National
and international keynotes as well as talks on
the topics of disaster risk, criticalinfrastructure, public health, floods, extreme
weather situations and mass movements
were given. The presentations were selected
via a call for abstracts and will be provided ina book of abstracts.

Activities within the working groups were continued.
Five groups were already established in 2018: (1)Mass movements and earthquakes, (2) Floods, (3)Extreme weather conditions, (4) Critical infrastructure
and industrial hazards and (5) Socio-economic disasteraspects. Additionally, in 2020 a new working group
started to work on (6) public health having a current
focus on COVID-19. Again, two meetings (spring andwinter) were organized in 2020 to develop research
proposals, for networking and evolvement of new
project consortia for open calls and to prepare contents
and the modus for the DRDs.

About 300 people were registered for the
online event.
Dr. Christian Resch
E-mail: christian.resch@dcna.at

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DCNA is currently participating in several
scientific projects covering topics fromavalanche warning systems, supraregional
radiological emergencies, evaluation of civil
protection exercises, public warning systems
to disaster robotics. An updated list of projects
is available via the DCNA webpage: https://www.dcna.at/index.php/de/

Recently DCNA has 18 full members and 10
associated members. In 2020 the following
ones joined the network: Stadt Innsbruck,
Stadt Graz, RIOCOM, Medical University of
Innsbruck, Medical University of Graz,
University of Klagenfurt, University of
Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, Technical
University of Munich, SBA research.

The development of a new curriculum withinvolvement of four Austrian universities isunder development “masters in public safety
and security”.

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University of National and World Economy (UNWE)
Bulgaria
http://www.unwe.bg/en/

10th IFIP ICAICTSEE-2020 , University of National and World Economy,
Sofia, Bulgaria, November 27 – 28th, 2020—http://icaictsee.unwe.bg/

The SRCDRR organized two conferences, whichwere conducted fully online due to the COVID-19
pandemic. Both conferences are officiallyregistered by the International Federation for
Information Processing (IFIP, https://ifip.org/).

The conferences included topics, such as
Business Information Systems, Big Data, Internetof Things, Cloud Computing, Mobile Computing,
Software Engineering, Biomedicine, BI, AI, XR,
etc. More than 75 papers were presented.

The 10th Anniversary International ConferenceonApplicationofInformation
andCommunication Technology and Statistics in
Economy and Education (ICAICTSEE-2020),
November 27 – 28th, 2020, UNWE, http://
icaictsee.unwe.bg/.

Prof. Dimiter Velev
Director
E-mail: dgvelev@unwe.bg

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The 5th IFIP Conference on Information
Technology in Disaster Risk Reduction(ITDRR 2020), December 3 – 4th, 2020, UNWE,
http://itdrr.unwe.bg/. The conference included
topics, such as: Advanced ICT and disasters, Big
Data and disasters, Climate change and disaster
risk, Communications in disasters, Disaster
information processing, Disaster prevention andmitigation, Disaster relief, resilience andresearch, Hazard vulnerability and risk mapping,etc. The Program Committee received 49 paper
submissions, out of which 25 research papers
were finally accepted and presented at theconference. The ITDRR-2020 Proceedings will
be published IFIP AICT series by Springer, as theprevious four volumes.

Two SCRDRR members were guest editors in
the Special Issue on “IT in Disaster Risk
Reduction – Issues and Challenges” inInformation System Frontiers -A Journal of
Research and Innovation, Springer, http://siitdrr.unwe.bg/. The journal received 22
submissions and 9 papers were accepted tothe special issue.
The SCRDRR continued its R&D activity on
disaster risk reduction with a special focus on
disaster
preparedness
training
with
investigating the use of XR, 5G and AI. Morethan 10 papers were published in different
conferences worldwide.

5th IFIP ITDRR-2020
University of National and World Economy, Sofia, Bulgaria
December 3 – 4th, 2020
http://itdrr.unwe.bg/

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French Geological Survey (BRGM)
Francehttp://www.brgm.eu/

Electricity injection to measure the depth and thickness of the clay layer by electrical
tomography (ERT) (Chaingy, Centre-Val de Loire Region, France). © BRGM - A. Burnol

BRGM is a French public institution in Earth
Science, employing over 700 engineers andresearchers. BRGM research brings practicalresponses to the major challenges facing
society and arising in particular from climatechange, increasing mineral resource scarcity,
new energy needs, natural risks and soil andwater pollution.

contributed to the 2020 European seismic
risk model. The contribution focused on asimplified mapping of lithological site effects
on a European scale (1: 1,500,000), and led
to the production of several maps, including
lithologic and stratigraphic maps.

This year, BRGM was involved in several
ongoing projects concerning risk reduction.
Among them is the European project H2020
SERA(Seismology
andEarthquake
Engineering Research Infrastructure Alliancefor Europe). For this project, BRGMGADRI Annual Report 2020—104

Dr. LEVY Clara
E-mail: c.levy@brgm.fr

GADRI Annual Report — Europe

Another BRGM project involve long-termmonitoring to study the shrinkage and swelling ofclays. Since 2017, the experimental site ofChaingy (Centre-Val de Loire Region, France),
an area highly exposed to the shrinkage andswelling of clays, is monitored with a combinationof in situ observations using extensometers andhumidity sensors, and temporal acquisitions fromthe Sentinel-1 and SMOS satellites of ESA(European Space Agency). The first results allow
considering an innovative method to characterize
the shrinkage and swelling of clays using remotesensing methods.

One of BRGM’s roles is to provide decisionmakers with diagnostic and decision-making
tools to support risk prevention and sustainable
rural and urban planning. As such, BRGM has
provided support to two African countries in thearea of sustainable development. In the Central
African Republic, the BRGM-INSUCO-ONFI
consortium delivered five tools for theenvironmental and social safeguard of the
Natural Resources Governance Project (PGRN).
The BRGM notably contributed to theenvironmentalandsocialmanagement
framework, to the pesticide management plan,and to the functional framework. In Morocco,
BRGM is a stakeholder in the Franco-Austrian
twinning for "Support for the implementation of
the National Charter for the Environment andSustainable Development". The BRGM isinvolved in activities related to strategic
environmental
assessment,
environmental
auditing, as well as the environmental police forindustrial pollution.

BRGM also provided support for diagnostic when
BRGM conducted expert appraisals on behalf of
the Brazilian chemical and mining group
BRASKEM. The aim of this project was todetermine the origin of an earthquake and land
movements that affected parts of the city ofMaceio. Attributed to mechanical instabilities ofcavities in a salt formation nearly 1000 m deep,
these events led to a critical analysis of thegeophysical methods implemented to image
geological formations as well as structures andcavities.

This year, BRGM also provided technical support
to the French institute DRIEE (regional andinterdepartmental directorate for the environment
and energy) on two occasions, for the
management of pipeline leaks. The objective wasto estimate the propagation time of pollutants inorder to estimate the urgency of implementing
measures to cut off transfer routes, and toprovide recommendations on the management ofthese pollution.

A ruptured pipeline caused oil pollution of rivers in France. The BRGM was asked tosupport the management of this pollution. © SDIS 78 - F.B oubet - L. V. Bolivia-Kahn
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Risk Reduction Technology (CEDIM), Germany
http://www.cedim.de/english

Fig.: Current
cases of the
COVID-19
pandemic on
the new CEDIM/
RisklayerExplorer (as of
12/18/2020).

The Center for Disaster Management and Risk
Reduction
Technology(CEDIM)isaninterdisciplinary research center in the field of
disaster and resilience research. By synergisticallycombining competences from different disciplines,
CEDIM develops new models and concepts fornovel solutions in the fields of natural disasters,
hazards and resilience. Within the current research
focus on near-real time Forensic Disaster
Analysis (FDA), CEDIM investigates the dynamics
and interrelations of disasters, identifies major risk
drivers, estimates the impact as fast as possible,
and infers implications for disaster mitigation.
Already since February this year, CEDIM and
Risklayer (CEDIM spin-off), together with many
volunteers, have been collecting current Covid-19
case numbers on a subnational level via crowd
sourcing. The numbers are processed globally using
the CATDAT database and distributed via the new
CEDIM/Risklayer Explorer (http://www.risklayerexplorer.com), which was launched online ahead ofschedule. A pandemic shows many parallels tonatural disasters, which are normally the focus of
CEDIM's work. In both cases, resilience concepts
adjusted to the local scale are crucial for mitigationof impacts. Also in both cases, valid, up-to-date, andhigh-resolved data and information are the basis forimportant decisions – be it on relief measures or on
measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Theinterest in these data is considerable: in addition to
being used in future research projects, they areprocessed by various media and feed into the Johns
Hopkins University dashboard.
In the current funding phase of CEDIM R&D
projects, the focus is on the impact of heatwaves
and droughts in Central Europe in relation tosociety, economy and ecology. Research on this
topic is urgently needed given the large adverse thatheat waves and droughts have even inindustrialized areas such as Europe. Additional
knowledge will help to increase resilience and todevelop appropriate adaptation measures.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—106

Prof. Michael Kunz
CEDIM Spokesman
E-mail: info@cedim.deGADRI Annual Report — Europe

Institute for Advanced Sustainability
Studies (IASS), Germany
https://www.iass-potsdam.de/en

environmental, economic, and social sciences. With
its interdisciplinary expertise, the IASS was able toprovide important impulses for policymakers,
particularly with regard to the interactions of socialand political actions on the natural and social
environment. For example, the IASS prepared
several expert reports on the effects of thepandemic on energy and climate policy as well as
on air quality. The Systemic Risk Research Groupdeveloped evidence-based operational plans for
effective crisis communication for government
agencies and ministries.
Among the many activities of interdisciplinary policy
advice, it is worth mentioning that the IASS took an
initiative on behalf of the IASS-supervised science
platform "Sustainability 2030" to write a bundled
compilation of analyses and recommendations fromthe scientific community entitled: "Sustainably Out of
the Corona Crisis" (https://www.wpn2030.de/nachhaltig-aus-der-corona-krise/) for the German
government. Another major contribution has been
the IASS's participation in the official statements of
the German Academy of Engineering andTechnology to the German Chancellor's Office.
The rampant global pandemic caused by COVID-19
poses serious societal challenges to the entire
international community. The events of recent
months have made clear that the global community
was ill-prepared for the crisis. Despite clear
warnings of an impending pandemic for over a
decade (shortly after the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak),very few countries had established serious
pandemic plans and taken precautionary measures.
Thus, in the first phase, IASS activities were limited
to framing the pandemic in the context of global
risks and challenges, especially in the media. This
involved, on the one hand, the relative risk posed by
COVID-19 compared to other health risks, such as
influenza, and, on the other hand, the social
consequences of the pandemic, such as thedifferential burden on women and men.

In the area of "Democratic Transformations," ahighly attended internet-based Town Hall Meetingon civil society strategies for coping with the Covid
19 pandemic in the particularly affected countries of
Latin America was organized with international
partners, which brought actors and affected groups
from government, civil society, and citizens into alively communicative exchange. These learning
experiences
show
that
transdisciplinary
sustainability research must be ready to design andpromote transdisciplinary procedures of inclusivecrisis management already in the run-up to future
global crises.

As the crisis progressed, it
quickly became clearthat analyzing
the consequencesof the measures introduced
andassessingtheir proportionality required
interdisciplinary
expertise and systematic judgment from the

GADRI Annual Report 2020—107

Prof. Ortwin Renn
Scientific Director
E-mail: Ortwin.renn@iass-potsdam.deGADRI Annual Report — Europe

Department of Earth Sciences
University of Florence, Italy
https://www.unescogeohazards.unifi.it

The Department of Earth Sciences of the
University of Florence (DST-UNIFI), https://www.dst.unifi.it) is a recognized center forinternational research and higher training in
Italy with an Engineering Geology groupcounting almost over than 60 persons amongprofessors, researchers, technicians, postdoc fellows, PhD students, collaborators andvisiting fellows. Since 2005 the DST-UNIFI
was appointed as Centre of Competence on
Geo-Hydrological Risk by the Italian Civil
Protection Department. Its functions weretransferred to the Civil Protection Center oftheUniversityof
Florence(https://www.protezionecivile.unifi.it), which is anoperational structure of the National Serviceof Civil Protection founded in 2018 andrecognized in the role of Competence Centerin the same year. This is the only Italian
university structure with an internal Civil
Protection Center. At an international level inthe field of Landslide Risk Reduction the DST-UNIFI was entitled in 2008 as a World Centreof Excellence (WCoE) (2008-2011) by the
Global Promotion Committee of International
Programme on Landslides (IPL) of UNISDR.
This recognition was reaffirmed three times
over for 2011-2014, 2014-2017 and 20172020.

and training events, and was involved by the
National Civil Protection Service in several
emergency operational activities for thetechnical support in the geo-hydrologicalhazards
treating
human
life
and
infrastructures. In particular, the research
activities carried out in 2020 focused on: i) theuse of innovative multi-sensor technologies(i.e., Ground-based SAR interferometry, UAV,
Laser Scanning) for analysis of risk scenarios
to support emergencies situations; ii) EO(Earth Observation) data and technology todetect, map, monitor and forecast grounddeformations;iii)
Regional
landslideforecasting models. Several landslide sites
are monitored in Italy by means of theaforementioned techniques. These research
activities have been carried out in theframework of national and international
multidisciplinary projects in different scales ofactivity and temporal extension. The mainscientific outcomes and therelative
description of useful products in the technicalfield were published in about 60 publishedpapers in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

In 2020 the activities of Civil Protection
Centre continued the scientific support of the
security of University of Florence, with theidealization and drafting of the University's
Civil Protection plan, organized dissemination

GADRI Annual Report 2020—108

Prof. Nicola Casigli
E-mail: nicola.casagli@unifi.it

GADRI Annual Report — Europe

The DST-UNIFI is founding member of theInternational Consortium on Landslides (ICL)
since 2002. Within this framework the DSTUNIFI continued the activities related to theorganization of the 5th World Forum onlandslides (WLF 5), which due to the COVID19 pandemic was postponed from 2-6
November 2020 to November 2-6, 2021 in
Kyoto (Japan). In particular, the Center ofCompetence coordinated the activities ofTheme 3: Monitoring and rapid warning oflandslides.
As part of the organization of WLF 5, the staffof the competence center participated innumerous virtual meetings with the scientificcommittee of the World Forum on Landslides.
In September 2019, during the 14th session of
the Global Committee of the International
Program on Landslides (IPL) at the UNESCO
headquarters in Paris, the Civil Protection
Centre, together with 58 signatories (including
UNESCO, UNU, IRDR, WFEO, GRF Davos,
IGS, the National Department of Civil
Protection
and
other
governmentorganizations) preliminarily signed the Kyoto
Commitment 2020 (KLC2020) for the global
promotion of the understanding and reductionof the risk of landslides. The Kyoto
commitment was definitively approved during
the virtual launching session that took place on
2, 3, 4 and 6 November 2020. During theconference Prof. Paolo Canuti, Chair Holder of
the UNESCO Chair on Prevention andSustainable Management of Geo-hydrological
Hazards, funded in 2016 at the DST-UNIFI,
was awarded with the Varnes Medal for 2020
(the highest career award for professional
excellence in landslide research from the ICL).
In the same conference Prof. Nicola Casagli
and Prof. Veronica Tofani were elected
President and Vice President of ICL,
respectively. Meantime, the Center ofCompetence also began organizing the 6th
World Landslide Forum (WLF 6), which will behosted in Florence in November 2023 (Fig. 1).

Between January 13th and 15th, 2020 theCenter of Competence, in collaboration with
the Joint Research Center of the European
Commission (JRC), the Department of Civil
Protection, the Directorate General for Civil
Protection, European Humanitarian Aid
Operations (DG ECHO) and the International
Network for Government Science Advice(INGSA), organized the intensive andinternational professional training course forcivil protection operators, entitled “Evidence
and Policy Disaster Risk Management School”.
This course was held at the Novoli University
Campus of the University of Florence.
The UNESCO Chair on Prevention andSustainable Management of Geo-hydrological
Hazards (UNESCO Chair), based at the DSTUNIFI, has the mission of carrying out researchand development (R&D) for the prevention andmanagement of landslides, in order to support
policies and actions of risk reduction (https://www.unesco-geohazards.unifi.it).
The
UNESCO Chair, in line with the activity carriedout in the framework of the WCoE and the IPL
projects is contributing to some priority actionsof the Kyoto 2020 Commitment (Actions 1, 2,
3, 6, 9). Furthermore, despite the COVID-19
pandemic the UNESCO Chair keeps promoting
the protection of cultural heritage threatened
by geo-hydrological hazards, with special
regards to UNESCO world Heritage sites anddeveloping countries (Madagascar, Georgia,
Saudi Arabia), providing technical support andby means of scientific dissemination.

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Global Earthquake Model (GEM)
Foundation, Italy
https://www.globalquakemodel.org

TREQ Project team during a virtual training on OpenQuake engine software

The year 2020 was a milestone year for GEM,
because of the significant advances made incapacity development, new projects andpartnerships, products released and participationin virtual events, which were accomplishedduring a difficult period of time due to an ongoingpandemic.
Close to 300 risk professionals were trained
online on seismic hazard and risk analysis using
OpenQuake engine software under the USAIDsupported TREQ project – officially launched in
Quito, Ecuador in March. The online training
workshops given in Spanish and English versions
reached more than 30 countries worldwide.
GEM collaborated with ADB, EdF France, AXA/IDF and the World Bank for various new projects
that ranged from developing a new disaster risk
transfer facility in Central Asia, to an advanced
approach for seismic risk assessment of nuclear
power plants; and from building capacity and risk
understanding in Georgia to building a publicprivate partnership to protect public schools fromnatural hazards in Peru.

Five new partners teamed up with GEM to workin several related but different areas of research
and application: innovative disaster resilience;enhancement of loss modelling capabilities forbetter decision making; utilization of seismic
sensors to assess building vulnerability; anddevelopment of high-performance computing in
the field of geophysical hazards. Four public andprivate institutions also renewed their respective
commitments to support GEM in the years
ahead.

Prof. John Schneider
Secretary-GeneralE-mail: john.schneider@globalquakemodel.org

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Social Vulnerability

Economic Vulnerability

Due to the ongoing pandemic, GEM has put
together an experimental map combining
COVID-19 statistics over the GEM global
earthquake risk map (2018) to show areas
where a damaging earthquake could cause
increases in COVID-19 cases due todisplacement of people from damagedbuildings or where health care systems may befurther stressed due to human injuries.

Recovery Potential

has accumulated more than 2800 downloads ofopen products as of November.
On UN’s IDRR Day, GEM released sevenregional and national earthquake models giving
open access to seismic hazard and risk data to
the public, including 16 peer-reviewed papers
documenting the GEM2018 earthquake mosaic
of models published in Earthquake Spectra.

GEM launched its products and services
strategy to reach a wider range of stakeholders.
A new Products page was launched in April and

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On World Bank’s Understanding Risk Forum
10th year anniversary, GEM launched threeglobal earthquake social vulnerability andresilience maps aimed at better understanding
the various socio-economic factors that can
exacerbate the impact of earthquakes. In
addition, GEM also released population andbuilding exposure data for more than 40
countries under the METEOR project.

GEM also contributed to two major publications:two case studies on risk analytics and seismic
hazard assessment for the IDF Development of
Risk Analytics Report, and the Hazard

Definitions Report: Understanding Hazards to
Reduce Risk co-published by UNDRR and theInternational Science Council.

This year also marked the 10th year anniversary
of GEM’s flagship product: the OpenQuake
engine software. A webinar participated in by
250 individuals marked the celebration. GEM
released three OpenQuake engine software
updates adding various features to enhance
performance and capability to analyze multiperils.

16 peer-reviewed papers documenting the GEM2018
earthquake mosaic of models published in
Earthquake Spectra available by subscriptions

Brochure on the release of seven regional andnational earthquake models

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OpenQuake engine online training participants

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The Main School of Fire (SGSP)
Polandhttps://www.sgsp.edu.pl/

In 2020 four organizational units of the Main School ofFire Service (Szkola Glowna Sluzby Pozarniczej,
SGSP) actively participated in disaster risk reduction(DRR) due to natural hazards and man-made events.
There were the Institute of Safety Engineering, theInstitute of Internal Security, the Faculty of Safety
Engineering and Civil Protection and the Firefighting
Rescue Units of SGSP. Consequently, during the firstfull year of participation in GADRI, SGSP covered
research, educational and operational areas of the
reduction, also in the pandemic conditions.
In the reported period, SGSP was continuing the
research in following international projects related to
DRR aspects:

1. Improving

Disaster
Risk
ReductioninTranscarpathian Region, Ukraine — ImProDiReT,
EU Civil Protection Mechanism.

2. Community Safety Action for Supporting Climate
Adaptation and Development (CASCADE).

3. DRiving InnoVation in crisis management for

European Sensor System for CBRN Applications (EUSENSE), Horizon 2020.
Furthermore, SGSP initiated a national research task
which has been funded by the National ScienceCentre in MINIATURA4 Program. The task titled‘Factors shaping safety perception in the system
disaster risk reduction in Poland’ is dedicated directly
to DRR and reflects a holistic approach to societal
dimension of the reduction.
The Scientific Papers of the Main School of Fire
Service (https://zeszytynaukowe-sgsp.pl) stated aplace of knowledge exchange in DRR as well as othersafety and security-related issues. It was especially
important due to the open access formula of the
publications.
In addition, doctoral dissertations which had been
initiated in security studies (in social sciences) and inenvironmental engineering, mining and powerengineering (in technical sciences) were continued in
the direction to finalize them in 2021.

European Resilience (DRIVER+), 7th Framework
Programme.

4. SAFEguard of Critical heAlth infrastructure(SafeCare), Horizon 2020.

Prof. Pawel Gromek
E-mail: pgromek@sgsp.edu.pl

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Pic. 1. Operational test in the EU-SENSE project (August 2020)
Source: https://www.sgsp.edu.pl/?page_id=17266

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Faculty of Security Engineering, University of Žilina
Slovakia
http://fbi.uniza.sk/en/

In the current emergency situation connected with themeasures against the COVID 19 infection the Faculty
has been addressed by several crisis managementlevels to cooperate with and support the activities ofvarious characters.
In cooperation with the Crisis Management Section of
the Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic theFaculty has started registering the volunteers for theneeds of this Ministry. The activity scope is very large.
The students worked in the quarantine centres forrepatriated persons. Others provided the generalpublic with information in the call centres according to
the manuals who to contact in the case of a suspicionof the infection, when to go for a check and where anda lot of other information. We are regularly given
feedbacks from the Crisis Management Section of the
Ministry of Interior of the Slovak Republic – theauthorities are very satisfied and the most important
thing is that the students utilise the knowledge
acquired during the study.
Member of the Central Crisis Staff, addressed theFaculty of Security Engineering with a demand toprovide student volunteers who could be involved in
the groups realising the community services if thelimitations of the movement of the persons in Slovakia
are tightened with the goal of minimising the spread of
the COVID 19.

Voluntary Activities of the Student Associations at
the FSI UNIZA during Emergency Situation
The Territorial Association of the Slovak Red Cross is
active in Žilina. The FBI UNIZA students are also
members of this association and work in the Local
Association of the Slovak Red Cross at the FSIUNIZA. They are not only in Žilina but also all over
Slovakia – approximately 30 students are active here.
In the framework of the COVID 19 activities they deal
not only with making the protective masks (fromprocuring the material up to distribution to particularclients) but also with classifying the patients in front of
the hospitals and measuring the body temperature at
the hospital entrance in various districts of Slovakia
and with distributing the food aid for the sociallyweaker groups of the inhabitants. The make theprotective masks free of charge and have aimed at
the most endangered groups of people – they are e.g.
the children at the Faculty Hospital in Žilina,
Emergency Services Falck, senior houses andhomeless people.

Dr. Katarina Holla
Associate Professor
E-mail: katarina.holla@fbi.uniza.sk

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The FBI UNIZA students
and employees also
helped with the planning
process of moving of all
students from the student
dormitories.
They
established check points
in the UNIZA dormitories
where they checked thepersons entering thepremisesbythethermovision camera anddigitalthermometers.

Althoughthelargestattention is paid to copingwith the COVID 19
emergency situation, the
FSI UNIZA participates insolvingothercrisisphenomena according to
the need. On Monday, 6thApril 2020, the Regional
Operation Centre of FireProtection
andEmergencyŽilinaaddressed the VoluntaryFire-Protection
BrigadeŽilina and UNIZA whose
majority part is created by
thestudents
andemployees of the Facultywith a requirement forhelp during the liquidationof the forest fire by thevillage Považský Chlmec
and extinguishing the
local centres of the fire.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—117

Theyutilisedthethermovision
cameraMicro-epsilon Tim 450
belonging to the labs oftheSecurity
Management
Department. The Faculty
students also ensured
the security of thepersons who move in thedormitories.

GADRI Annual Report — Europe

Institute of Earth Sciences, University of
Lausanne, Switzerland
https://wp.unil.ch/risk

The group risk at the Institute of earth Sciences
University of Lausanne, as any others have been
affected by the pandemic. The field works werelimited. New projects such as the study of large
instability in Ticino (CH) was initiated, it consists tostudy the different risk scenarios linked to a large
potential rockslide and debris flows.

The main axis of research is linked to a better
understanding of rock slope failure hazard. We areespecially working on the thermal effect of rockfatigue, but we initiated research on the impact ofweathering on rock fatigue. Different local andregional studies are completed or ongoing in
Yosemite and in the Alps.

On the side of computational sciences, a code
related to slope movements are developed using
MPM method, which will allow very high resolutions
using GPU with CUDA.

Twelve publications about different aspects oflandslides such as their hazard, their modelling, andtheir characterization, were published in 2020.

We also initiated research in Nepal linked to theresilience of the population linked to climatechanges and natural hazards.

Prof. Michel Jaboyedoff
E-mail: michel.jaboyedoff@unil.ch

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Evidence Aid, United Kingdom
https://www.evidenceaid.org/

Evidence Aid has excelled this year, thanks to theamazing work of our core team (with particular mention
to Margaret Anderson, Zbys Fedorowicz, Anish Jammu,
Ahmad Firas Khalid, Alexa Phillips, Jiewon Lim,
Christine McKee and Jo Wood) and our numerous
volunteers, particularly for our COVID evidencecollection which currently includes summaries covering
information from almost 600 systematic reviews (at end
November 2020). The summaries are written by
volunteers (including professors, doctors, nurses,
medical writers, PhD students and undergraduates) all
around the world. They are quality checked by a panelof experts, are intended for use by anyone – both inhigh and low resource settings. They are freely
available to anyone and the website is mobileoptimised. To ensure the relevance to low resource
settings articles are reviewed by volunteers in thosesettings who can assess the applicability to their healthcare delivery. The volunteers are not only summary
writers, but also take part in screening, searching forrelevant records, administrative support and website
maintenance.
Unsurprisingly, some of the most popular resources arethose on the effectiveness of facemasks andquarantine, although this often changes related to what
is a much-discussed topic in the world media and inspecific countries. Studies summarised and translatedon the open access website range from infection
prevention and control (including for healthcare
workers) to social issues, mental health and the impact
on levels of domestic violence. The collection includes
summaries of systematic reviews that might be relevantto the direct impact of COVID-19 (including reviews of
emerging research as well a reviews of relevant
treatments) on health and other outcomes, the impact of
COVID-19 response on other conditions and longer
terms issues to consider for the recovery period after
COVID-19.

These summaries have been routinely translated into
Arabic, Chinese, French, Portuguese and Spanish, and,for some, into Italian and German. Some 400,000
people have now seen these summaries this year, mostof them in lower- and middle-income countries. We’d
like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has
helped create this unique platform, which is being
widely used to inform decisions about the direct andspill-over effects of this world-wide pandemic.
Since the pandemic broke, over 75,000 scientific papers
have been published on COVID-19 across the world
and a new one is appearing every three minutes in
November. Those needing guidance on what to do havebeen presented with such a plethora of information, it
has been impossible for them to sort out the good fromthe bad and to find what should matter most to them.
The situation has led to a 1000% increase in visitors to
the Oxford based Evidence Aid website. Evidence Aid
has systematically checked thousands of papers torefine the latest scientific findings and summarise themfor use by healthcare practitioners.
In addition to the COVID pandemic work (which hastaken most of our time), we have migrated our website
to a new more easily searchable platform, increased oursocial media engagement over different communication
channels, worked with interns and volunteers to add to
our Refugee evidence collection, worked with Public
Health England on a drought report and with Oxford
PharmaGenesis to engage pharma companies in ourwork on plain language summaries and evidencecollections.

Frontline workers and decision makers in countries
around the world are crying out for information they canswiftly absorb and apply immediately in clinical settings.
Most of these workers don’t have time to read through,what is now, thousands ofresearch papers. In
fact,evidencefrom the work
Evidence Aid has donesuggests many
may only have time to engage withposts
onsocial media. We need to give them the information
they need, in the format need, in the language theyneed at the time that they need it.
GADRI Annual Report 2020—119

Ms. Claire Allen
Operations Manager
E-mail: callen@evidenceaid.org

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Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR)
University College of London, United Kingdom
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/rdr

Multi-hazard-prone Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh

The Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR)
became UCL’s newest formal academic department
following a decision by UCL Council.
BSc Global Humanitarian Studies new degree
programme was approved by UCL Education
Committee starting in 2021.

We responded to the coronavirus crisis with initiatives
includingthe
IRDR
Covid-19
Laboratory,#MyLockdownJournal andtheEuropean-wide
perceptions survey: ‘COVID-19 Emergency, Recovery
and Improvement’

We welcomed the appointments of Dr Punam Yadav
and Dr Jessica Field as Lecturers in HumanitarianStudies.

Prof. Peter Sammonds
Director
E-mail: p.sammonds@ucl.ac.uk

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IRDR Centre for Gender and Disaster launched theGenderResponsive
Resilience
andIntersectionality in Policy and Practice (GRRIPP)
project funded by the UKRI Collective Fund
Networking Plus Partnering for Resilience for £5
million, 2020-24 led by Prof Maureen Fordham andDr Punam Yadav,Prof Ilan Kelman won a Belmont Forum award,
Climate, Environment and Health Collaborative
Research Action, Community collective action to
respond to climate change influencing theenvironment-health nexus, EUR 1.3 million, 202022.

Prof Patty Kostkova won a Belmont Forum award,
Mosquitoes population modelling for early warning
system and rapid response, EUR 1.3 million, 202022.

The IRDR hosted the Humanitarian Institute UN
STG Evening Conference on Natural Hazards,
Conflicts and Disasters in the Himalaya events,
hosted in collaboration with the University ofKashmir, attended bay 160 people andHumanitarian Masterclass on Earth Observation
and Natural Hazards, in February 2020.

Some notable publications:•Alam, A., Sammonds, P. and Ahmed, B., 2020.
Cyclone risk assessment of the Cox’s Bazar district
and Rohingya refugee camps in southeast
Bangladesh. Science of The Total Environment,
704, p.135360.

•

Chinkin, C., Kaldor, M. and Yadav, P., 2020.
Gender and new wars. Stability: International J
Security and Development, 9(1). doi: http://
doi.org/10.5334/sta.733•

Kelman, I., 2020. Disaster by Choice: How ouractions turn natural hazards into catastrophes.
Oxford University Press.

•

Pescaroli, G., Velazquez, O., Alcántara-Ayala, I.,
Galasso, C., Kostkova, P. and Alexander, D., 2020.
A Likert Scale-Based Model for Benchmarking
Operational Capacity, Organizational Resilience,and Disaster Risk Reduction. Int J of Disaster Risk
Science. doi:10.1007/s13753-020-002769

The IRDR and Dhaka University, Centre for
Genocide Studies, hosted the 2nd International
Conference on the Rohingya Crisis in Comparative
Perspective, attended by 300 people, with keynote
addresses by H.E. Ms Saida Muna Tasneem(Bangladesh High Commissioner to the UK) and Mr
RobertChatterton
Dickson,BritishHigh
Commissioner to Bangladesh, in December 2020.

Prof Patty Kostkova won the Innovator of the Yearby Computing Women in Tech Excellence Awards
for her COVID-19 My Lockdown Journal app
project.

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Water Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC)
Loughborough University
United Kingdom
https://www.lboro.ac.uk/research/wedc/

The year of 2020 was a challenging year because of
the Covid-19 pandemic. During the year, the Water
Engineering and Development Centre (WEDC) of
Loughborough University continued to deliver
several disaster-related research projects amid
unprecedented challenges. In these research
projects, the Loughborough University researchers
work in international and multi-disciplinary teams tobuild resilience to disasters and achieve sustainable
development.

•

The NERC funded ‘River basins as 'living
laboratories' for achieving sustainable
development goals across national and subnational scales’ project (February 2019January 2021) Total £400,000 (£130,000 for
Loughborough) [involving Qiuhua Liang,
Lee Bosher, Xilin Xia, Huili Chen andJiaheng Zhao]•

The NERC funded ‘Valuing the benefits ofblue/green infrastructure for flood resilience,natural capital and urban development in
Vietnam’ project (January 2019-July 2021)
Total£500,000(£185,000
forLoughborough) [involving Lee Bosher,
Qiuhua Liang and Jiaheng Zhao]•

The NERC funded ‘FUTURE-DRAINAGE:
Ensemble climate change rainfall estimatesfor sustainable drainage’ project (February
2019 – June 2021) Total £280,000(£138,000 for Loughborough) [involving

Qiuhua Liang, Xilin Xia, Huili Chen and
Xiaodong Ming]•

The UK Met Office funded ‘Weather andClimate Science for Service Programme:
Building a Flood Impact Model for India’
project (September 2019 – April 2021) Total£585,000 (£185,000 for Loughborough)[involving Xilin Xia, Qiuhua Liang and Syed
Kabir]•

Thew NERC funded ‘PYRAMID: Platform for
dYnamic, hyper-resolution, near-real time
flood
Risk
AssessMent
Integrating
repurposed
and
novel
Data
sources’ (August 2020 – August 2022) Total£787,200 (£182,838 for Loughborough)[involving Qiuhua Liang]•

The ‘Gender Responsive Resilience andIntersectionality in Policy and Practice(GRRIPP) - Networking Plus Partnering for
Resilience’ (UKRI-GCRF, Total: £4.8mln,
led by Prof Maureen Fordham, UCL)
[involving Ksenia Chmutina]

Prof. Qiuhua Liang
E-mail: q.liang@lboro.ac.uk

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Despite the halt of international travel, the members of •WEDC have continued to disseminate their researchin difference ways such as giving invited talks via
Zoom.

Qiuhua Liang and Huili Chen gave invited talks atthe virtual Annual Dialogue of the Koshi DRR
Knowledge Hub on ‘Assessing GLOF exposureusing high-performance hydrodynamic modellingand open-source data’ (2020)•

Lee Bosher became member of the WHO •Thematic Platform for Health EDRM Research
Network (2020 – 2021)•

Ksenia Chmutina and Lee Bosher have been
invited to give two ICCROM/UNESCO webinars(2020 – 2021)

Ksenia Chmutina co-authored the paper‘Protecting Crowded Places: Challenges andDrivers to Implementing Protective Security
Measures in the Built Environment’ [doi: 10.1016/
j.cities.2020.102891]•

Ksenia Chmutina and Lee Bosher became
members of UNDRR expert group on traditional
knowledge in DRR (2020 – 2021)

Lee Bosher and Ksenia Chmutina giving invited talks at ICCROM/
UNESCO via Zoom

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Global Disaster Resilience Centre (GDRC)
University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom
http://www.hud.ac.uk/gdrc

In 2020, academics and researchers at the Global
Disaster Resilience Centre, University of Huddersfield,
UK have been successful in receiving key international
grants, awards, esteemed positions and with key
publications.
1. ISC-UNDRR Expert Review Group (ERG) for theDevelopment of a new Global Disaster Risk
Reduction Research Agenda towards 2030 andbeyond. Prof. Dilanthi Amaratunga has been invited
to be a member of the ISC-UNDRR Expert Review
Group (ERG) for the Development of a new Global
Disaster Risk Reduction Research Agenda towards
2030 and beyond. ERG members are expected toprovide their views, insights, suggestions, written
contributions, and recommendations for the
Research Agenda, and in particular, to help toidentify critical research gaps, strategic directions
and areas of cooperation between scientificcommunities and between science, policy and otherstakeholder groups.
She is representing theEuropean Commission’s Joint Research Center(JRC) and UNDRR European Science &Technology Advisory Group (E-STAG) at the ERG.

Exercise (IOWave20) held on the 13th October
2020. IOWave20 simulated all
Indian Ocean
countries being put in a tsunami warning situation
and required the National Tsunami Warning Centre(NTWC) and the National and/or Local Disaster
Management Offices (NDMO/LDMO) in eachcountry to implement their Standard Operating
Procedures (SOPs). She also shared the key points
with the rest of the 28 Indian Ocean countries
during the workshop : “ IOTWMS-IOTIC PostIOWave20 Lessons Learnt during Exercise Indian
Ocean Wave 2020”, held from November 2020,
organised by UNESCO IOTWMS
 Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga was appointed
by UNDRR as a panellist to formally review DRR
National Strategy Assessment of Bulgaria.
Other panellists included representatives from
Government of Bulgaria (Director of State Control
and Preventive Activity Directorate; Head ofPreventive Activity Department; Head of Disaster
Risk Reduction); Sendai National Focal Point –Sweden; Sendai Technical Focal Point – Serbia;
100 Resilient Cities Initiative – Local level
resilience; Joint Research Centre of the European
Commission; the World Bank.

2. Prof. Dilanthi Amaratunga has been appointed as a
Steering Committee Member of the UK's Frontiers
Programme, which is the joint programme of the UK GDRC has been successful with the following
four national Academies: The Royal Academy of funded projects during 2020:
Engineering, the Academy of Medical Sciences, the
1. Integrating
epidemic
andpandemic
British Academy, and the Royal Society
preparedness into disaster risk reduction. This
3. Professor Richard Haigh and Professor Dilanthi
GCRF funded project explores how BiologicalAmaratunga are formally appointed international
hazards (e.g. epidemics and pandemics) such as
experts of IOC UNESCO Intergovernmental
COVD 19 can be integrated in development
Coordination Group for the Indian Ocean Tsunami
planning, including in the development of national
Warning and Mitigation System (ICG/IOTWMS)
and local disaster risk reduction strategies (target E
Intersessional Meeting of Task Team on Tsunamiof the Sendai Framework), and in enhancing
Preparedness for a Near Field Tsunami Threat (TTpreparedness for early and better recovery. The
Near Field). The Task Team will work towards
project has 6 international partners.
enhancing Tsunami preparedness for near-fieldtsunami hazard including improving end-to-end
national warning chains learning from the recent
tsunami events. The Task Team will report to theSteering
Group
and
be
composedofrepresentatives from WG-1, WG-2, WG-NWIO,IOTIC, interested Member States and international
Prof. Dilanthi Amaratunga
experts with a Chair and Vice-Chair.
Head
E-mail: d.amaratunga@hud.ac.uk
4. Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga was the formallyappointed International observer for Sri Lanka for
the UNESCO IOTWMS Indian Ocean Tsunami
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2. “Integrating pandemics, tsunami and other multihazard preparedness into early warning andurban planning" research proposal has beensuccessful and is funded by QR/GCRF. Our partners
include: Ministry of Health, University of Colombo,
Peradeniya, and Moratuwa; State Ministry of Urban
Development, Sri Lanka; Federation of Local
Government
Authorities,
Sri
Lanka;
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC)of UNESCO: Intergovernmental Coordination Groupfor the Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation
System (ICG/IOTWMS): Chamber of Commerce, Sri
Lanka; Disaster Management Centre, Sri Lanka;
Bandung Institute of Technology, Indonesia; Asian
Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC), Thailand;
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction(UNDRR).

will address two, inter-related challenges on the
pandemic-natural hazard hybrid scenario: How tocope if a major natural hazard occurs during the
COVID-19 pandemic? and How can pandemic
preparedness make use of the existing infrastructure
for tackling other hazards?

5. REGARD – Rebuilding AfteR Displacement Euripean
Commssion
Erasmus+
Strategic
Partnerships for higher education funded REGARD is
led by GDRC. Grant Amount is € 389,000. Our
partners include: Tallinn University (Estonia), Lund
University (Sweden) and University of Colombo (SriLanka) . REGARD project aims to develop
competencies in rebuilding communities following
disaster and conflict induced mass displacementsfrom the perspective of the built environment.

3. GDRC at the University of Huddersfield is an 6. BEACON (Built Environment leArning for Climate
International Expert and a Co-I, Australian ResearchCouncil (ARC) funded Research Hub forTransformation of Reclaimed Waste Resources toEngineered Materials and Solutions for a Circular
Economy. This grant is valued at $ 12.4 million cash
+ $ 6 million in kind. Project investigators are from:
RMIT; The University of Melbourne; UNSW, Sydney;
The University of Queensland; Deakin University; The
University of Adelaide; Western Sydney University;and University of Technology, Sydney; University of
Huddersfield, UK; University of Texas, USA;
Hokkaido University, Japan; Lulea University ofTechnology, Sweden. And it has 32 industrial
partners

4. Improving COVID-19 and pandemic preparedness
and response through the downstream of multihazard early warning systems. GDRC leads the
UKRI/GCRF/EPSRC funded Improving COVID-19
and pandemic preparedness and response throughthe downstream of multi-hazard early warning
systems projectwith the following partners:
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka; University ofColombo, Sri Lanka; Ministry of Health, Sri Lanka;
Disaster Management Centre, Sri Lanka; Federationof Sri Lankan Local Government Authorities, Sri
Lanka; The Association of Disaster Risk Management
Professionals of Sri Lanka (ADRiMP); The Asian
Disaster Preparedness Centre, Thailand; UNDRR(The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk
Reduction) & ESTAG (Science & Technology
Advisory Group) of UNDRR; Greater Manchester
Combined Authority (GMCA), UK; Public Health
England; The Intergovernmental Coordination Groupfor the Indian Ocean Tsunami
Warning and
Mitigation
System(ICG/IOTWMS)
of
The
Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of
UNESCO (IOCUNESCO), Working Group 1: Tsunami
Risk, Community Awareness and Preparedness. We

adaptation). Its value is € 449,455.00 and the
GDRC is leading this project with partners from:
University of Huddersfield (lead); Lund University,
Sweden; UNIVERSIDAD DE CANTABRIA, Spain;
UNIVERSITA TA MALTA, Malta; University ofColombo, Sri Lanka and University of Moratuwa, Sri
Lanka. Funder is Euripean Commssion Erasmus+
Strategic Partnerships for higher education. In
BEACON, we will tackle climate change and built
environment nexus.

7. Strengthening

University-Enterprise
Collaboration for Resilient Communities in Asia
(SECRA) - SECRA too has been successful recently.
It is valued at € 1 million and is led by Mid Sweden
University, Sweden. GDRC is a core partner of
SECTRA consortium. There are 13 core partners and
15 associate partners in SECTRA. It is funded by theEuropean Commission
Erasmus+ CBHE. The
overarching aim of SECRA is to contribute to more
resilient communities in Asia through institutionalized,
systematic, monitored, innovative, and inclusive
university–enterprise collaboration (UEC) in climatechange action and disaster resilience (DR).

8. Research Network in tackling climate change as
an underlying disaster risk driver (CCA-DRR)“Research Network in tackling climate change as anunderlying disaster risk driver (CCA-DRR)” has beensuccessful and will be funded by the European
Commission. Addressing the dual and inter-related
challenges of CAA and DRR is one of the mostcritical necessities for the sustainable development
agenda beyond 2015. Our planned research
programme will bring together a bi-lateral cohort ofexperts from UK and Sri Lanka, aiming to aims toadvance the dialogue between the CAA and DRR
communities. GDRC is leading this project with 8 Sri
Lankan universities, and is a three year project.

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Publications

GDRC members have been
publishing their research output
and our vision have been toinvest their efforts in generatinghigh quality publications that areinternationally
outstanding,displaying a very high level oforiginality, significance and rigour,innovative and potentially agenda
setting, and is, or is likely to be, anessential point of reference forwork in its field.
Publications
written by GDRC members include the following :Books and book chapters; Refereed research papers;
Editorials; Conference proceedings; Vision papers,
Briefing Papers, and Research reports, and areavailable at: https://pure.hud.ac.uk/en/organisations/
global-disaster-resilience-centre
We very successfully held the International
Symposium on Tsunami and Multi Hazard Risks, Early
Warning and Community Awareness in supporting theimplementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction 2015-2030 - To promote and support theavailability and application of research, science andtechnology to Policy, Practice and decision-making in
Disaster Risk Reduction, from 16th to 18th December
2020. The event was jointly organised by the Disaster
Management Center from the Government of Sri
Lanka, the University of Huddersfield in the UK, theAsian Disaster Preparedness Center, and the
University of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka, with the input
from several other partners. Event co chairs were :Professor Dilanthi Amaratunga and Professor Richard
Haigh from GDRC, Major General (Retd) Sudantha
Ranasinghe & Sunil Jayaweera, Disaster Management
Centre, Sri Lanka; and Dr Chandana Siriwardena,
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka.
The three-day event, held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, as a
hybrid face to face and online, brought together over2500 participants from the Sri Lankan Government,
the third and private sector, and higher education.
They examined how research, science and technology
could be used to support efforts to reduce to support
the implementation of Sendai Framework for Disaster
Risk Reduction towards 2030. Due to the pandemic,
many Sri Lankan and international participants took
advantage of an online platform to join the event
remotely.

At the culmination of an International Symposium on
Wednesday 16th December 2020, thirty-two national,
regional and international agencies responsible fortackling disaster risk in Sri Lanka, came together toagree the Colombo Declaration of Multi-Hazard Early
Warning and Disaster Risk Reduction.
The Symposium programme included a combination offour keynote addresses and five panel discussions
that involved leading national and international policy
makers and scientists. These were complemented bytwenty technical sessions where 157
detailedscientific, policy and practical applications were
presented and shared.
These wide-ranging interventions provided the basis
for a Declaration by the Disaster Management Centre,
Government of Sri Lanka, together with other key
stakeholders responsible for disaster risk reduction in
the country, region, and beyond, to work together totackle the priority issues identified and addressed
during the Symposium. It is a key milestone for theDisaster Management Practice Community in Sri
Lanka, adopting the Colombo Declaration, which will
reshape, rephrase and accelerate the implementationof National strategies supported by Global andregional instruments.
The Declaration expresses deep concern at thegrowing frequency and intensity of extreme weather
and climate-related challenges, and their continuing
impact of disasters, resulting in an unacceptable lossof human lives and livelihoods, displacement ofpeople, and environmental and economic damages in
Sri Lanka and across the world.

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The Declaration sets out fifteen key priorities andactions that must be taken by stakeholders in orderaddress these challenges.
The Declaration also recognises the devastating
impact of COVID-19 around the world and the threat
posed by future epidemics and pandemics. It stresses
the need to focus on developing a holistic
understanding of societal challenges, risks anddrivers, like poverty, climate change, loss of protective
eco-systems and biodiversity, rapid urbanisation andunplanned development in hazard prone areas, socioeconomic inequalities, and population growth alongwith their interactions. It underlines the need to build
resilience against all hazards, including emerging andunforeseen hazards such as biological, human-animaltransfers of diseases, hormones and microplastics.

The Declaration was inspired by the UN Sendai
Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, agreed by UN
member states in 2015. It includes a strong call forhigher education and science to support theunderstanding of disaster risk and promote riskinformed decisions and risk sensitive planning fromthe local to the global levels. The goal is to strengthen
the evidence-base in support of the implementation of
the new framework.

The Declaration recognizes the importance ofensuring coherence among the global frameworks
such as the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development, the Paris Agreement on Climate
Change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk
Reduction, and the New Urban Agenda among others.
There is an urgent need to strengthen and mainstream
the inclusion of the research, science, and technology
applications. There is also a need tobuild acommunity of practice that crosses scientificdisciplines, and links science, policy and practice. This
Declaration provides an important step in roadmap forachieving this and protecting people at risk.

Fifty-four scientific contributions from the conference
will also be published in a peer reviewed book, titled:“Multi-Hazard Early Warning and Disaster Risks[Amaratunga, D., Haigh, R,. & Dias N. (Ed.)], to be
published by Springer Nature in 2021.

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Disaster and Development Network (DDN)
Northumbria University Newcastle, United
Kingdomhttps://www.northumbria.ac.uk
The Disaster and Development
Network(DDN)
produces
knowledge and skills that engage
hazards, disasters and complex
emergencies from the perspectiveof different development debatesand experiences. It examines thecurrent and future survivability andresilience of people in the face ofclimate, economic, and politicalchanges. DDN originated frommultiple activities of the previous
Disaster and Development Centre(DDC) launched 2004 as part ofNorthumbria
University’s
Department of Geography andEnvironmental Sciences. The DDN operates as across-disciplinary externally facing network of the
Universities inter-related initiatives of the Disaster,Development and Resilience (DDR) research group,
student led Disaster and Development Society (DDS),
inter-Faculty research cluster for Geographies ofDevelopment and Disasters (DDG) and a Northumbria
University multi-disciplinary sustainable development
thematic initiative. Some achievements and timely
reporting for 2020 include:

disruptions at Beira Mozambique, and in relation to‘Disaster Education for Community Resilience’ (British
Council, Bindura) and the ‘Zambezi Valley Advocacy
Project’ (DFID, SCF, Basilwizi Trust) in Zimbabwe.

In February (also early year, pre-COVID lockdown)
Prof. Collins was honoured with the 6th DPRI Award
for Outstanding Contributions to Research and
Education recognition. The Award was presented by
Prof. Manabu Hashimoto, Director, DPRI, Kyoto
University on 20th February 2020 during the DPRI
Annual Meeting held at DPRI, Obaku Plaza, Kyoto,
Japan. To commemorate the occasion, Prof. Collins
delivered a lecture on “Progress and Prospect for
Action Data in People Centred Disaster Risk
Reduction and Resilience Building”, as well as two
additional lectures on “Systematising and Desystematising the Societal Contribution in Disaster
Risk Reduction” and “Revisiting Infectious Disease
Risk Reduction in the Context of Current
Emergencies” during the visit.

Prof. Collins visited Zimbabwe and Mozambiquepartners (early year, pre-COVID lockdown) for post
project impact assessments of ‘Infectious Disease
Risk Reduction’ (DFID, British Council, WHO, UNICEF
Moz Govt. and ICDDR,B) following the Cyclone Idai

GADRI Annual Report 2020—128

Prof. Andrew Collins
LeaderE-mail: andrew.collins@northumbria.ac.uk

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New research grants include those of Drs. Katie Oven,Francis Massé and Kevin Glynn who gained leading
positions in multi-million pound UKRI Global
Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) partnershipinvestment for the following projects:

Katie
Oven
–
“Sajag-Nepal–Planningandpreparedness for the mountain hazard and risk chain in
Nepal”: 2020-2023
Francis Massé – “Identifying and mitigating the impactsof COVID-19 on legal and sustainable wildlife trade in
LMICs”: 2020-2022

Kevin Glynn - “Ixchel: Building understanding of thephysical, cultural and socio-economic drivers of risk forstrengthening resilience in the Guatemalan cordillera”:
2021-2024

Collins and Becky Richardson advanced new workwithin the UKRI-NERC, GCRF “Tomorrow’s Cities,
Multi-hazard Urban Risk Transitions” research hub, that
includes a new fully funded PhD Scholarship to support
DDN work on ‘people-centred risk and well-being
engagement and communication transitions in fragile
neighbourhoods’, focused initially on Nairobi, Kenya.

Richard Kotter led an initiative for Northumbria in
Pakistan; an example of DDN external engagement
work on the ground with the Emergency Services
Academy, governmental organisations as well as in thefield and with national media outings, focussing on well-established and foundational work with theInternational Emergency Team of the United Kingdom(of which he is also an invited trustee) and the Punjab
Emergency Service (aka Rescue-1122) to progress
multi-levelled planning, training and field actions for
integrated emergency and disaster management. This
also included guest lecturing to disaster management,
city and regional planning and community wellbeing
students at the University of Engineering andTechnology (UET) in Lahore.

The year 2020 marked the 20th Anniversary of the MSc
Disaster Management and Sustainable Development,
the first postgrad program in the world with this focus,
with a global alumnus of approaching 400 people, of
which many have also successfully completed PhDs
and to which many staff have contributed. The
Department’s
specialist
final
year
optional
undergraduate module in this area in 2020 again
received the highest number of student selections (80).

The immediate staff, researchers, PhD scholars andaffiliates of the DDN have published multiple papers inhigh-ranking journals and other outputs throughout theyear. One policy leading example included theNorthumbria-led, UNDRR Data Working Group that
calls for data to be more active in achieving theintended outcomes of the Sendai Framework for
Disaster Risk Reduction: https://www.undrr.org/
publication/stag-data-working-group-report

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Overseas Development Institute, United Kingdom
https://www.odi.org/

ODI’s Global Risks and Resilience Programme
published a range of reports, toolkits, briefing andworking papers in 2020. Visit www.odi.org/our-work/
programmes/global-risks-and-resilience•

Risk-informed approaches to humanitarian funding:using risk finance tools to strengthen resilience•

In pursuit of resilience: assessing threats and trade-offs for risk-informed development in Myanmar
and Niger•

Integrating ‘anticipatory action’ in disaster risk
management•

The evidence base on anticipatory action•

Strengthening forecast-based early action in the
Caribbean•

Anticipatory action for livelihood protection: acollective endeavour•

The ‘triple dividend’ of early warning systems:
evidence from Tanzania’s coastal areas•

Reducing the risk of protracted and multiple
disaster displacements in Asia-Pacific•

The influence of the physical environment on selfrecovery after disasters in Nepal and thePhilippines•

Climate change, conflict and fragility: an evidence
review and recommendations for research andaction•Enhancing women-focused investments in climate
and disaster resilience•

Livestock markets in the Sahel: market integrationand the role of climate and conflict in priceformation•

The impact of Covid-19 on climate change anddisaster resilience funding: trends and signals•

Economic Pulse 1: Covid-19 and economic crisis –China’s recovery and international response•

The humanitarian impact of combined conflict,climate and environmental risks•

Using mobile phone surveys to track resilience andpost-disaster recovery: a how-to guide•

Projects

The programme is working on numerous multi-year
projects/initiatives, including:• leading researchandstrategic
knowledge
management for Building Resilience andAdapting to Climate Change in Malawi (BRACC)(2020-2023)’s Knowledge and Policy Hub:www.resilience.mw• research lead and communications lead for
Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in
Recurrent and Protracted Crisis (SPARC) (2020 –2025), which aims to generate evidence andaddress knowledge gaps to build the resilience of
pastoralists, agro-pastoralists and farmers in subSaharan Africa and the Middle East.
• Adaptation Without Borders, an ODI, SEI andIDDRI collaboration supporting policymakers andplanners to more effectively identify, assess andmanagetransboundary
climaterisks:
adaptationwithoutborders.org/about-adaptationwithout-borders• ODI’s Global China 2049 Initiative: www.odi.org/ourwork/china• Dr Emily Wilkinson supporting the Climate
Resilience Execution Agency for Dominica (CREAD)
as Chief Scientific Adviser.

Several blogs exploring Covid-19 in the context ofclimate change and conflict.
GADRI Annual Report 2020—130

Ms. Emma Lovell
E-mail: e.lovell@odi.org.uk

GADRI Annual Report — Europe

EventsMedia highlights•

Katie Peters chaired “Humanitarian impact of
combined conflict, climate and environmental risks”
at UNGA 75 and Dr Rebecca Nadin chaired the“Reimagining risk and resilience for a global future”
webinar as part of UNGA’s SDG Action Zone

• The Financial Times, the China Times and Les Echos
cited ODI’s first Economic Pulse : Covid-19 andeconomic crisis – China’s recovery and international
response•

Katie Peters chaired the joint contribution by ODI,
ICRC, GIZ, World Bank “Crossroads: Managing
Intersecting Risks of Conflict, Violence, Disasters
and Climate Change” at the 2020 Understanding
Risk conference•

Dr Rebecca Nadin delivered a keynote ontransboundary climate risks at the HKH to Glasgow:
Climate action in the Hindu Kush Himalaya webinar•

Dr Rebecca Nadin discussed adaptation andresilience as part of the UK-Bangladesh Climate
Partnership Forum virtual series•

Dr Rebecca Nadin chaired and Paul Sayers
presented at a British Embassy in Moscow event on‘Nature-based solutions: the IUCN global standards
and programmes in Russia’•Paul Sayers presented on nature-based solutions at
the Moscow Clean Country Forum• DownToEarth referenced "Climate change, migrationand displacement: the need for a risk-informed andcoherent approach"• The Economist cited "The evidence base on
anticipatory action"• CDKN featured "Climate change, conflict and fragility:
an evidence review and recommendations forresearch and action"• We produced a video on ‘How to take early action in
the eastern Caribbean to avoid climate extremes
becoming disasters’• Letters / opinion pieces:• Financial Times: “What will the carbon footprint beof the AI revolution?” Devex: “To finance resiliencein small states, governments and development
partners must take some risks”• Thomson Reuters Foundation News: “Whatlockdown looks like when you can't get home:
displaced communities and COVID-19” and“Dealing with COVID-19 in conflict zones needs
a different approach”

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GADRI Annual Report — Africa

AfricaGADRI Annual Report 2020—133

GADRI Annual Report — Africa

AfricaGADRI Annual Report 2020—134

GADRI Annual Report — Africa

AfricaAlgeria

Faculty of Civil Engineering, Built Environment Research Laboratory (LBE), University of
Science & Technology Houari Boumediene (USTHB)

Egypt

Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University

Egypt

Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Assiut University

Egypt

German University in Cairo (GUC)

Egypt

Water Resources Research Institute (WRRI), National Water Research Center（NWRC),
Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation

Ghana

University for Development Studies (UDS)

Ghana

Department of Geography & Resource Development, University of Ghana

Ghana

Hydrology and Water Resource Engineering,
Water Research Institute, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

MoroccoFaculty of Sciences and Technics of Mohammedia, University of Hassan II of Casablanca

South Africa

Disaster Management Training and Education Centre for Africa (DiMTEC), University of theFree State

Sudan
Zimbabwe

UNESCO Chair in Water Resources
Geography Department, Bindura University of Science Education
African Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (AADRI)GADRI Annual Report 2020—135

GADRI Annual Report — Africa

Africa Alliance for Disaster Risk Institutions (AADRI),
Bindura University, Zimbabwe
https://www.aadri.org.zw/

Pre-season 2020 by the local disaster team in
preparations for the tropical cyclone season in
Chimanimani, a tropical cyclone prone area in
Zimbabwe.

Most of the 2020
was not as active
as most of theprevious years.
The majority ofthecountries
work
under
lockdown where
there
were
intermittent travel
restrictions andencouragement
to stay at home
in
order
to
containthe
spread of the
COVID-19.
These
restrictions were
enforcedparticularly
toflatten the peakof both the firstand second waves.
Of note is that in Africa the pandemic did not ravage thecontinent as was expected. The death rates from COVID-19
even for the most affected like South Africa and Egypt weresignificantly lower than that of Europe and the Americas.
Tanzania, whose president declared the country a no covid19 zone thereby allowing local institutions to operate as if
covid-19 does not exist did not become an epicentre for the
spread of the disease. No masking, no social distancing andwashing of hands etc. were enforced. This unexpected showof events regarding the covid-19 impacts on Africa still
remains an area of research.

Prof. Desmond Manatsa
Email: dmanatsa@gmail.com

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GADRI Annual Report — Africa

Below are some of the AADRI activities which occurred before the COVID-19 restrictions:

Young women in the Tropical Cyclone prone region of Chimanimani (Zimbabwe)discussing challenges faced by women during disasters/emergencies

AADRI’score
disaster risk reduction
team which carries
awareness activities
in disaster prone
areas. The AADRI
presidentProf
Desmond Manatsa iswarring a hat whilst
the vice president Dr.
Chipo is on the left
first row.

GADRI Annual Report 2020—137

Geographical Distribution of

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Members of GADRI as of 31 December 2019

GADRI Annual Report 2020—139

GADRI Secretariat, Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University

GADRI SECRETARIAT

Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI)
Kyoto University
Gokasho, Uji-shi, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan

Tel: +81-774-38-4651
E-mail: secretariat-gadri@dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Website: http://gadri.net/
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