The Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance is heading to Vienna from 8-13th April to present a varied and powerful portfolio of our work at the European Geosciences Union (EGU) General Assembly– here is what to expect.
The EGU brings together geoscientists (scientists who are dedicated to understand the earth, its resources, environment and natural processes) from all over the world, providing a forum to present their work and discuss their ideas with similar experts.
This year eight members from four organisations active in the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance will be sharing their experiences of building flood resilience. The strength of the Alliance comes from the breadth of perspectives and approaches brought by each partner: from global research to on-the-ground action. The work being showcased at EGU is a testament to that strength. From creating powerful tools to measure flood resilience, to trialling innovative early warning systems the Alliance continues to explore what community resilience means from a global scale right down to the most flood vulnerable individual.
If you’re planning to attend the event make sure you add the following sessions to your personal programme. If not, follow the links to read more about the work being presented and sign up to our e-newsletter to receive the latest releases from the Alliance and hear how they got on at EGU.
Alliance presentation schedule
Gender in flood early warning systems: lessons from Peru and Nepal
Practical Action
Mirianna Budimir will be presenting during the Hydrology, society and environmental change PICO session. She will be talking about research conducted in Nepal and Peru that examined the gender dimensions of flood early warning systems. The hope is that this research will help create systems that deliver early warning messages to all that need them, including the most marginalised and vulnerable, and so save more livelihoods and lives.
Read the presentation details
Mon, 09 Apr, 15:52–15:54, PICO spot 5b
Communicating probabilistic flood forecasts in Nepal
Practical Action
Mirianna Budimir will also be presenting a poster during the session on Methods and Tools for Natural Risk Management and Communications. This time she will be talking about a new probabilistic flood forecasting method being piloted across Nepal in association the Nepal Department of Hydrology and Meteorology. The system takes a low-data approach and can extend current lead time by 5 hours. The research project is also asking how best to communicate these warning messages so they are understood and acted on appropriately.
Read the poster details
Posters Mon, 09 Apr, 17:30–19:00 / Hall X1
Measuring flood resilience: Results from across the globe
IIASA
Finn Laurien will be presenting a poster during a session titled ‘resilience and vulnerability assessments in natural hazards and risk analysis’. Building on the previous report on the first large-scale analysis of resilience measurement data, this poster gives the latest results to show how community resilience can be measured over time, and how these learnings can benefit those communities.
Read the full paper description
Posters on Tue, 10 Apr, 17:30–19:00 / Hall X1
Natural hazard event analyses for risk reduction and adaptation
Zurich Insurance Group
Michael Szoenyi will be co-chairing both an oral and poster session which bring together experts working to prepare for future risk by learning from past events. Event-focussed studies from around the world will be presented with a particular focus on how to make assessments quicker and more effective.
Read the session details
Orals on Wed, 11 Apr, 13:30–17:00 / Room L6
Posters on Wed, 11 Apr, 17:30–19:00 / Hall X1
Opportunities for Building Resilience: Post-Event Learning from the 2017 Peruvian Floods
ISET
A highlight of the above session on hazard event analysis will be Karen MacClune presenting a post-event review capability (PERC) of the 2017 floods in Peru. PERC’s are an approach developed by Zurich Insurance to analyse flood events; understanding how and why floods unfold as they do, how successfully they are managed and opportunities for further improvements. The January floods were caused by an unpredictable “Coastal El Niño” weather event and affected over 1.5million people, claiming 162 lives. This review aims to find lessons from this tragedy so that communities can be more resilient in the future.
Read the presentation description
Orals on Wed, 11 Apr, 13:30–17:00 / Room L6
Wider work from Alliance partners
As the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance partners continue to delve into the science of resilience and uncover solutions to create it in communities, so their project portfolios expand outside of the Alliance to make use of this knowledge. The following related projects are also being delivered at EGU.
Operationalizing Early Warning Systems (EWSs) for Hydrologically Induced Landslides in West Nepal: Challenges and Opportunities
Practical Action
Given by Madhab Uprety, this presentation is a highlight of the Operational forecasting and warning systems for natural hazards: challenges and innovation PICO session. This project applies lessons learnt within the Alliance about flood events to landslide hazards in Nepal. Specifically, taking inspiration from the use of citizen-science, cost-effective sensors and simple monitoring systems to reduce the risk from landslide and to combine the early warning messages in a multi-hazard framework.
Tue, 10 Apr, 13:30–15:00 / 15:30–17:00 / PICO spot A
Moving towards Forecast Based Flood Preparedness in Nepal: Linking Science of Predictions to Preparedness Actions
Practical Action
Madhab Uprety will in fact be presenting twice at the above PICO session – this time focussing back on flood risk, and drawing on lessons and partnerships from Practical Action’s work within the Alliance. This project is part of the NERC Science for Humanitarian Emergencies & Resilience programme, and works closely with the Nepalese government to operationalise a way to turn flood forecasting into meaningful and life-saving early action.
Tue, 10 Apr, 13:30–15:00 / 15:30–17:00 / PICO spot A
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