wp7: dissemination, networking, on-line access filearmonia project (contract n° 511208) deliverable...

ARMONIA PROJECTContract n° 511208

WP7: Dissemination, networking, on-lineaccess

Del. 7.6Report on the proceedings of ARMONIA

workshop 1: “Multi-Hazards: Challenges for RiskAssessment, Mapping and Management”,

Barcelona, Spain, December 2005

Project funded by the European Community under the:

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, GLOBAL CHANGE AND ECOSYSTEMS

ARMONIA PROJECT (Contract n° 511208) Deliverable 7.6

Contract Number: 511208

Project Acronym: ARMONIA

Title:Applied multi-Risk Mapping of Natural Hazards for Impact Assessment

Deliverable N°: 7.6

Due date: 31.1.06

Delivery date:

Short Description:

Deliverable 7.6 is a summary report on the proceedings of ARMONIAworkshop 1: “Multi-Hazards: Challenges for Risk Assessment, Mapping andManagement”. The conference was held in Barcelona, Spain, 5 and 6December 2005, and organised by Lancaster University, Department ofGeography and Staffordshire University Institute for Environment andSustainability Research.

Partners owning: ULANC & IESR

Partner contributed:

Made available to: All project partners and EC

VersioningVersion Date Name, organization0.1 23.1.06 Hugh Deeming & Gordon Walker (ULANC)0.2 24.1.06 Fiona Tweed (IESR)0.3 24.1.06 Hugh Deeming (ULANC)0.4 14.3.06 Fiona Tweed (IESR)

Quality check

Internal Reviewers:1st Internal Reviewer: Katja Firus, T62nd Internal Reviewer: Giuseppe Delmonaco, T6


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Table of contents

1 Report on Proceedings.............................................1

1.1 Introduction................................................................. 1

2 Session Synopses ....................................................2

2.1 Initial Plenary Session ................................................... 22.2 Parallel Session 1: Multi-Hazard Mapping......................... 22.3 Parallel Session 2: Multi-Risk Assessment........................ 32.4 Parallel Session 3: Spatial Planning for Multi-Hazards........ 32.5 Parallel Session 4: Decision Support and Risk Management 42.6 Final Plenary Session .................................................... 4

3 Assessment of the Conference as Part of the ARMONIAProject.........................................................................4

4 Conference Outputs.................................................5


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1 Report on Proceedings

MULTI-HAZARDS: CHALLENGES FOR RISKASSESSMENT, MAPPING AND MANAGEMENT

5th – 6th December 2005, Barcelona, Spain

1.1 IntroductionOn 5th and 6th December 2005, 36 delegates gathered at the Hotel CataloniaDuques de Bergara, Barcelona for the inaugural ARMONIA conference.

The conference focused on providing a multi-disciplinary forum for thediscussion of the issues and challenges presented by the spatial coincidenceof contrasting forms of natural and technological hazards. Papers wereinvited that investigated four main themes relating to current risk, hazardand vulnerability assessment methodologies:

• How can the assessment of risk, hazard and vulnerability takeaccount of the interactions between different forms of natural hazardand between natural and technological hazards?

• What methodologies can be used for assessing the risks frommultiple hazards in a place and producing maps which representthese risks?

• How can information on multi-hazards be communicated to and usedby decision-makers involved in various stages of the riskmanagement cycle (with a particular focus on spatial planning)?

• What lessons can be learnt from case studies of disasters involvingmulti-hazards and from best or worst case decision-making in multi-hazard environments?

The event encompassed two days of plenary and presentation sessions,involving contributions from 14 partners and invited guests. Thepresentations encapsulated a range of important work being undertakenwithin the field of multi-hazard research. The inter- and intra-disciplinarydiversity of the presentations also clearly illustrated the relevance ofharmonisation projects, such as ARMONIA.

Following an initial introduction and plenary session the delegates split forthe parallel presentation of papers which had been clustered to reflect theconference themes. The final plenary session on Tuesday afternoonprovided an appropriate synthesis to the proceedings, offering anopportunity for the discussion and integration of key ideas.

The conference was truly international in scope as evidenced by thediversity of participants involved and the contexts and experiences thatthey discussed. Amongst the delegates were participants from Italy, UK,


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Spain, Germany, Netherlands, Finland, Belgium, Turkey, Switzerland,France, Czech Republic, Slovenia and Canada.

2 Session Synopses2.1 Initial Plenary SessionThe session was opened by partners from T6, Italy. Guiseppe Delmonacooutlined the ARMONIA project objectives and the progress that had beenachieved towards them. Claudio Margottini then spoke about existingexamples of multi-risk mapping methodologies and their relevance withinthe ARMONIA project.

George Eftichidis of Algosystems, Greece, introduced the delegates to theLessLoss risk mitigation for earthquakes and landslides project. Followingthis, Philipp Schmidt-Thomé, from GTK in Finland, compared the prevalenceof natural and technological risks, at European NUTS resolution, in a paperthat reported the results of research on the ESPON 5 Hazards project.

Karen Fabbri of the European Commission then provided a comprehensivepresentation of current and future European strategy. She explained theaims and objectives that are guiding European research policy on disastersin the European Commission in general, and within her department,Information & Communication Technologies (ICT) in particular. EUFramework Programme 7 is currently being structured in accordance withboth the EU Sustainable Development Strategy and the Lisbon Strategy.The disaster-related aim within this programme is the integration of ICTwith multi-risk research. The objective is to reduce disaster risk throughincreasing our understanding of the complexity of the interactions thatoccur between natural hazards and social systems. This objective is in clearaccordance with the ethos of the ARMONIA project.

Giovanni Menduni, from the Arno River Basin Authority in Italy, concludedthe session with a graphic presentation of the work being carried out inorder to raise the standard of protection against flooding in the Arno RiverBasin. This presentation provided an excellent introduction to an area andcontext which the ARMONIA project is planning to use for case study workin Work Package 6.

2.2 Parallel Session 1: Multi-Hazard MappingLothar Stempniewski from the Center for Disaster Management and RiskReduction Technology (CEDIM) at the University Karlsruhe in Germanyopened this session by presenting the centre’s work in mapping multiplerisks. Carmelo Di Mauro from the EU’s Ispra Joint Research Centre thenspoke of research being carried out in the Piemonte Region and theProvince of Varese, Italy. The authorities and researchers in this region arejointly developing a systematic approach toward multi-risk assessment thatraises the profile of hazards and vulnerability amongst a broad spectrum ofstakeholders. The conference’s furthest-traveled delegate, Peter Bobrowskyfrom the Geological Survey of Canada in Ontario, finished the session byspeaking about the North American perspective on landslide hazard and riskmapping.


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2.3 Parallel Session 2: Multi-Risk AssessmentThe multi-risk assessment session started with a presentation by AnnegretThieken from the GeoForschungsZentrum, Potsdam. Her paper related toresearch into the creation of a synoptic assessment of the storm, flood andearthquake risk for the city of Cologne. A risk-curve based approach toinforming stakeholders of specific vulnerabilities has proven successful.However, it is acknowledged that in the context of emergency and spatialplanning, risk maps which graphically illustrate risk zones, are moreeffective communication tools.

José Barredo from the JRC then presented a critique of a number of projectsthat have endeavoured to quantify risk at a national, regional or globalresolution and discussed the integrated assessment of weather-driven riskin Europe. His paper revealed the implicit challenges that scale, datahomogeneity and data quality can place on any attempts to illustrate risksin a practical and useable format at - potentially (for ARMONIA) – a Pan-European scale.

Concluding the session on multi-risk assessment, Oliver Korup from theSwiss Federal Research Institute introduced delegates to the EC-fundedIRASMOS project. This new project seeks to identify the risk of extremelyrapid mass movements, such as avalanches or outburst floods, affectingselected mountain communities throughout Europe. This presentation raisedsome themes common to research attempting to deal with multi-risk andmulti-hazard (e.g. inclusiveness, data resolution, comparability andunderstanding long-term effects). The project results will be used toaddress issues of disaster prevention and response, and the rehabilitationafter such events.

2.4 Parallel Session 3: Spatial Planning for Multi-Hazards

Murat Balamir, from the City and Regional Planning Department in Ankara,Turkey, opened this session with his presentation on macro and local levelrisk mitigation in Turkey. He described the importance of efforts to involvemultiple stakeholders in earthquake preparation and mitigation planning.This is being achieved in Istanbul through engaging them, both in theIstanbul Earthquake Master Plan, and at a more local scale in high-riskzones, as part of Action Plans such as that which operates in theZeytinburnu province.

Adriani Galderisi, from the University of Naples Federico II, Italy, presenteda paper on the utility of integrated vulnerability analysis in regional andurban planning. The paper illustrated that the principle of ‘overlappingeffects’ is not always relevant in multi-risk mapping, as the combinedaffects of a natural hazard triggered technological ‘accident’ (a Na-Techevent) can often be significantly different from if either were to occur inisolation. Accordingly, it is suggested that other tools (e.g. scenario-setting)should also be used in planning for such ‘chains of events’.

Stephan Grieving, from the University of Dortmund, Germany, completedthis session by presenting the outcomes of WP1 of the ARMONIA project, aEuropean review of spatial planning in the context of natural hazards andrisk assessment.


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2.5 Parallel Session 4: Decision Support and RiskManagement

This session was opened by Claudia Basta, of the Delft University ofTechnology, Netherlands. Recognising the utility of GIS in improving thetransparency and understanding of planning issues in relation to hazards,Claudia introduced the “Bridging the Gap” project. This is a comparativestudy that investigated the systems in place for the use of GIS as a decisionsupport and information tool in land-use planning. The GIS applicationsutilized for spatial planning around Seveso II sites in the Netherlands andthe UK have been investigated. Interesting differences have already beenidentified in relation to the public availability of sensitive information andthe challenges of communicating individual vs. societal risk for spatialplanning purposes via a GIS output.

André Asmann, of geomer GmbH, Heidleberg, introduced the conferencedelegates to the flood risk management services offered by the EC- andESA- funded Global Monitoring of the Environment and Security (GMES)system. The key aspect of the project is the integration and operationalprovision of information for better support of decision makers. Oncestandardisation issues have been suitably addressed, outputs, such as floodsimulation and damage assessment models, should be producible for anypartner country.

This session culminated with a presentation from Philipp Schmidt-Thoméabout SEAREG. This project has already produced a decision supportframework (DSF) that is being well-received by the planning authorities incities along the Baltic Sea Coast. Sea level rise presents genuine risk toinappropriate development in these cities and SEAREG has beenconceptualized to provide a potential framework that integrates aknowledge base with vulnerability assessment, GIS modelling andapplication and stakeholder discussion. Such a DSF is regarded as animportant tool in the provision of decision transparency in such urban areas,which are subject to the uncertainty of future sea level rise projections.

2.6 Final Plenary SessionA final plenary paper was presented by Robert Jelinek (JRC) on hazardmapping methodologies across the EU New Member States and CandidateCountries and the implications for their wider application in multi-hazardresearch. This revealed a highly variably situation across the new memberstates and candidate countries in terms of the availability of hazard mapsand the assessment methodologies being used. Discussion then followedregarding some of this issues raised by the conference as a whole.

3 Assessment of the Conference as Part of theARMONIA Project

The papers presented at the meeting raised issues with which many multi-hazard and multi-risk researchers seem to be wrestling. Common themesincluded: scale issues; the accommodation of resilience and vulnerability inplanning; the resolution, compatibility, availability, complexity and reliabilityof data; understanding and incorporating poorly-understood long-termeffects of natural hazards into mapping; compromises in using different


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types of data to create multi-hazard and multi-risk maps; how to producemulti-hazard and multi-risk information that is accessible and useful for arange of interested parties and stakeholders; and the importance ofengaging and involving end-users in the development of maps ascommunicative tools.

It was very useful to have input from a wide range of researchers andpractitioners, both internal and external to the ARMONIA project, and thisintegration of experience generated lively and useful debate. During thefinal plenary discussion, some of the key challenges were discussed further.Potential ways to resolve problematic issues generated by the researchbeing approached in the ARMONIA project - particularly around mappingmethodologies and the ways in which multi-hazard maps might be used toinform planning activities - were identified.

For the ARMONIA project, the conference achieved all of the objectives thatwe set out for it. We were able to find out about some of the leading workacross Europe, which is closely related to our interests in risk assessment,multi-hazard methodologies, spatial planning and decision support.Discussion both within and outside of the formal sessions enabled us toexplore common objectives and lessons learnt.

The need for ARMONIA to draw on other work in Europe and to link theoutcomes of our research to other ongoing projects was highlighted duringthe conference. There is also a need to identify links to germinating projectsand initiatives that might be able to take forward some of the work startedin ARMONIA.

4 Conference OutputsIn addition to this summary report, a CD containing written papers by mostof the participants at the conference has been produced. The CD alsocontains some of the presentations given at the meeting. This was compiledand duplicated at the conference so that all of the delegates could take acopy away with them. Further copies are available from Hugh Deeming [email protected]

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