Technical Expert Forum 2022: Tracking of hazardous events and disaster losses and damages

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View the event live on UNDRR's YouTube channel via the following links:

Tuesday, 29 Nov:

Wednesday, 30 Nov:

Context

The global community has been working on standardizing national information on losses and damages to better understand risk, and how these components change over time. Traditionally, the recording of disaster losses and damages starts at the impact level by the national disaster (risk) management offices (NDMOs) in terms of human and economic losses, often based on assessments by local authorities and humanitarian partners.

There are critical challenges in this process, including lack of or limitations in globally accepted methodology to uniquely identify an event in terms of its time of origin and completion, besides limited data standards. This requires increased coordination between the NDMO and sectoral agencies, like agriculture or transport, and NMHS.

There is, hence, the need for a global framework to cover: (1) Institutionalization of national disaster losses and damages tracking systems and relevant policies; (2) Primary hazard and loss data collection systems; (3) Adoption and application of standards; (4) Quality control; and (5) Capacity development.

The ongoing development of a new-generation disaster losses and damages tracking system, by UNDRR in partnership with UNDP, and cataloguing of hazardous events, by WMO, are good opportunities to strengthen tracking of disaster impacts, and their linkages with hazardous events. Hence, UNDRR, UNDP and WMO, are collaborating to co-organize a Technical Expert Forum on Tracking of Hazardous Events and Disaster Losses and Damages.

The Technical Expert Forum will follow a consultative process to advance mechanisms to record and account for hazardous events and disasters and their interlinkages. The Forum will:

1. Review and document good practices and gaps in recording of hazardous events and disaster impacts.
2. Discuss potential synergies among various national data from different agencies and institutions.
3. Discuss opportunities for strengthening hazardous event data and their linkage with impact data through partnerships and agreements at national as well as national to international levels
4. Identify challenges and opportunities to strengthen capacity for disaggregated data collection and analysis
5. Discussion of the role of the private sector for added value capabilities that can benefit developing, small islands developing states and least developed counties.

For additional information, contact undrr-bonn@un.org