Loss Database Architecture for Disaster Risk Management

Abstract

The reformed Union civil protection legislation (Decision on a Union Civil Protection Mechanism), which entered into force on 1 January 2014, is paving the way for more resilient communities by including key actions related to disaster prevention such as developing national risk assessments and the refinement of risk management planning. Under the Decision, Member States agreed to “develop risk assessments at national or appropriate sub- national level and make available to the Commission a summary of the relevant elements thereof by 22 December 2015 and every three years thereafter”. The Decision also requires Member States, together with the Commission, to develop guidelines on the content, methodology, and structure of risk management capability assessments. The Commission has published risk assessment and risk mapping guidelines to assist Member States with their national risk assessments. Risk management capability assessment guidelines were also developed.

The recent Communication from the Commission "Strengthening EU Disaster Management: rescEU -Solidarity with Responsibility" COM(2017) 773 final calls "Member States and Commission to promote more systematic collection and dissemination of loss data, to enhance the collection of loss data and make use of loss data for optimised prevention and climate adaptation planning".

Systematically collected, comparable and robust disaster damage and loss data are an essential element of the risk assessment and management processes. Thus, the Council Conclusions on risk management capability call on the Commission to 'Encourage the development of systems, models or methodologies for collecting and exchanging data on ways to assess the economic impact of disasters on an all-hazard basis.'

The current practice in disaster loss data recording across the EU shows that there are hardly any comparable disaster damage and loss data: differences exist in the methods of data recording as well as in the governance approaches to managing disaster damage and loss data. The lack of standards for damage and loss data collection and recording represent the main challenge for damage and loss data sharing and comparison, especially for cross-border cooperation within the EU.

This report is based on an accurate analysis of several databases developed following a diversified number of purposes to collect, record and aggregate information regarding losses occurred after a shock triggered by different hazards. The report proposes a common structure of a generic database able to accommodate and properly record the required particularities of a vast variety of events triggered by any kind of hazard.