Risk and Resilience
The major risks facing the world—from extreme events, to food and water security, to climate change—are complex, systemic, and far-reaching. Building on a history of ground-breaking research, the Risk and Resilience Program is well positioned to take an interdisciplinary, systems perspective on risk policy problems. The program aims to help transform the way societies manage risks while confronting the global trends amplifying them. There is also a strong emphasis on enhancing the resilience of vulnerable communities, countries, and regions.
Objectives
- Develop the next generation of the Risk and Resilience Program’s Catastrophe Simulation Model to incorporate interdependent risks and longer-term scenarios, with applications to flood resilience, the Loss and Damage Mechanism, UN Sustainable Development Goals, and other risk topics.
- Co-develop innovative resilience measurements, and management methods and tools as part of the Flood Resilience Alliance.
- Expand into new areas of risk research exploring contributions to the energy-water-nexus and how to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.
- Further develop and apply the Risk and Resilience Program’s participatory process design incorporating the heterogeneity of stakeholder views, multi-criteria analysis, and social media applications.
- Initiate and develop an extensive research network informing policymakers on how to address the loss and damage associated with the impacts of climate change, particularly in vulnerable developing countries.
- Establish a broad, capacity-building platform on disaster risk management and resilience to serve relevant institutions in IIASA member countries.
Top image © Wutthichai | Shutterstock
Selected highlights
In search of perfect foresight
The failure to foresee the catastrophic earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear accident of 2011 was seen by many as a fundamental shortcoming of disaster risk science in Japan. In light of this, the use of scientific knowledge came under renewed scrutiny. Debates continue...
Operationalizing the Loss and Damage Mechanism
With the impacts of climate change already being felt across the globe, it is imperative to manage and avoid further irreversible loss and intolerable damage. According to IIASA researchers, adaptive learning linked to climate risk management can...
Global breadbaskets: Possibilities for risk pooling
Simultaneous crop losses in different parts of the world can pose a serious risk to global food security. However, little is currently known about the spatial dependency of crop yield losses between global breadbaskets. In a recent study, IIASA researchers focused on...
Informing policy decisions when disaster strikes
Natural disasters in low-income regions have far-reaching impacts on all levels of society. A simulation framework developed by IIASA researchers can help policymakers to come up with informed short-term policies in an environment where they have...