Risk, Policy and Vulnerability
Disasters, Adaptation and Development

 

 

More than 700 major natural catastrophic events occur each year, and direct economic losses have increased 14-fold since the 1950s. While most of the economic losses are in the developed world, disasters impose the largest burden on developing countries, where estimates show the number of human victims and economic losses as a percent of GDP are far greater.

Despite these serious impacts disasters have frequently been perceived as “acts of God” and are often overlooked in policy planning. Recognizing that after-the-fact approaches for dealing with disasters are unsustainable in the long run, the policy paradigm has recently been shifting towards a more comprehensive approach that emphasizes ex-ante measures taken before a disaster happens.

Source: Edge of SpaceIIASA's RPV program occupies an internationally recognized niche in carrying out applied, interdisciplinary research for the purpose of reducing the vulnerability of developing and transition countries to the economic impacts of extreme events. Specifically, RPV is developing tools for the management of financial and economic disaster risk. Methodologically, this includes sophisticated stochastic simulation, optimization methods and economic modeling as well as developing decision-support tools including user interfaces for stakeholder processes. Furthermore, with growing interest on the part of the climate-change community in innovative ideas for helping disaster-prone, developing countries adapt to climate change, this research is proving useful in identifying vulnerable countries, projecting risks into a future with climatic and socio-economic change, and suggesting novel instruments for pre-disaster support. RPV is in the unique position to continue this line of research in close collaboration with policy makers in developing, transition and developed countries.

The research group conducts and contributes to the following projects:

Past Projects

For more information, contact Reinhard Mechler.


Responsible for this page: Jun Watabe
Last updated: 12 Jan 2011

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