Risk Modelling Workshop in Kenya

Building Disaster Resilience in Sub-Saharan Africa Disasters in Sub-Saharan Africa often take a huge toll on vulnerable populations. Loss of life and livelihoods in the face of already existing challenges sets communities back many years leaving them at risk should another natural hazard occur.

African countries suffer from inadequate information to enable risk-informed decisions. While the magnitude and intensity of disasters is increasing in the region, national capacity to systematically record the disaster losses and damages is low. To support disaster risk management in Sub-Saharan Africa, the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP) signed an agreement in 2013 to help strengthen ACP Member States’ regional integration and inclusion in the global economy, to address climate change as well as agriculture and rural development. The agreement also aims to contribute to better governance and education.

Under this agreement, the ‘Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities’ Programme was launched in July 2015. The programme was designed to provide effective implementation of an African comprehensive disaster risk reduction (DRR) and disaster risk management (DRM) framework. The EUR 80 million programme, funded by the European Union (EU) and covering a period of five years, is being implemented in Africa as part of a cooperation between the European Union (EU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States (ACP).

The Programme has five key result areas that focus on:

1. Strengthening regional DRR monitoring and Coordination;

2. Enhancing DRR coordination, planning and policy advisory capacities of Regional Economic Communities;

3. improving the capacities of national and regional climate centres for weather and climate services;

4. Improving risk knowledge through disaster loss databases for future risk modelling;

5. Developing disaster risk financing policies, instruments and strategies at regional, national and local levels.

Each result is guided by a set of activities at various levels and is implemented by four partners. These include, the African Union Commission (AUC), the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR/WB), and the African Development Bank’s ClimDev Special Fund (AfDB/CDSF).  

WORKSHOP CONCEPT NOTE

Result 4 of the Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities Programme aims to increase risk knowledge of target countries through the establishment of disaster loss databases and risk modelling. One key objective is to ensure that African countries will have improved knowledge on probabilistic risk assessment and cost-benefit analyses for disaster risk management as well as to enhance national capacity to incorporate climate change adaptation and DRR into public investment and development planning systems.

Sixteen countries in Africa will benefit from workshops dedicated to the development of the probabilistic risk profiles, that will focus on flood and drought hazard in a changing climate. Probabilistic risk assessment will be prepared considering property damage in human settlements and losses in agriculture for floods and impact in terms of water shortage, loss in hydropower production and loss in agriculture (including labour day losses) for drought.

The target participants for the workshops, include national public administration of civil defence ministries, disaster risk reduction agencies, line-ministries such as ministry of agriculture, environment, natural resources, education, health as well as universities and academia and other UN partners engaged with the Government on DRM. The five-day workshops will be used to transfer technical and scientific knowledge and results of probabilistic risk assessments, cost-benefit analyses and DRR to national stakeholders, the ultimate beneficiaries of the action.