Conceptualizing, Identifying, Analyzing, Stimulating, and Strengthening Transferable Disaster Risk Reduction Models

Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the Americas – Second Phase: Building Resilience

Period: April 1, 2014 to March 31, 2016

Goal

This project is designed to advance disaster risk reduction by influencing the drivers of existing risks and their consequences as well as helping avoid the creation and accumulation of new risk, and developing capabilities and mechanisms for building resilience. This design will be realized by identifying strategic areas in urban risk, paying particular attention to the informal settlement component of urban risk. The project will emphasize private sector participation strengthening risk management systems, and the monitoring and evaluation of DRR projects as well as the management, exchange, and transfer of DRR knowledge in current and future interventions.

Program Strategy

The DRR project is now located within Extreme Events Research at FIU, a unit that eventuated into the FIU Extreme Events Institute in 2013 under the direction of Dr. Richard Olson. This new organization embodies FIU’s research and applications leadership at the global level in extreme events, reflecting an institutional interest in development and multi-hazard disaster resilience, including disaster risk management, vulnerability reduction, preparedness, emergency response, resilience, and “smart” recovery. FIU’s existing research leadership in hurricanes, with the world-class International Hurricane Research Center (IHRC) and its Wall-of-Wind testing facility and storm surge modeling, is being increasingly complemented with social science expertise in disaster risk reduction across a range of natural and technological hazards, including climate change. The DRR in the Americas Project supported by USAID will greatly benefit from the new FIU initiative and organizational structure. The FIU-DRR project proposed here falls under the Risk Management Policy and Practice Sector, with eight objectives in three Sub-sectors: (1) Integration/Enhancement within Education Systems and Research; (2) Capacity Building and Training; and (3) Public-Private Partnerships.