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SAMRISK-Samfunnssikkerhet og risiki

Adapting Community Risk and Vulnerability Analyses for Climate Change

Awarded: NOK 4.5 mill.

Definition of a generalized risk and vulnerability analysis (RVA) methodology in Norway is anchored in a Norwegian Standard, NS 5814. The Norwegian approach to community risk & vulnerability analysis (CRVA), which has evolved from this standard, is fairly robust in that areas that are deemed to be unsafe are kept from being developed as a community expands over time, and infrastructure is by-and-large built to tolerate the anticipated loadings from extreme weather events. The problem is that many natural hazards are weather and climate related (such as floods, landslides, storms, wildfires and extreme heat waves). As future weather and climate are going to be different from past weather and climate, then CRVAs would need to take this into account if past and present community development are to continue to be safe for the future. Unfortunately, no clear framework has emerged, nationally or internationally, to incorporate the changing pattern of extreme weather events into CRVAs. In this project we will de velop a standardized CRVA tool that is adapted for climate change. The 3-year project, with participants from Norway, from five other European countries and EU's JRC Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen, will establish a methodology th at is mainstreaming (that is to say widely utilizable) and transformative (that is to say that it changes the way things are normally done); that integrates citizens' perspectives and risk communication; and that makes use of scenario building in its impl ementation. The methodology will build on sub-methodologies for hazard and infrastructure-specific RVAs and CRVAs, and the applicability of both the sub-methodologies and the final standard methodology will be demonstrated in the project. Norwegian projec t participants come from the public sector, the institute sector and two universities. The project also involves network and competence building directed at participation in EUs 7th Framework Programme.

Funding scheme:

SAMRISK-Samfunnssikkerhet og risiki