Good Practices in Disaster Prevention

Good practices in disaster prevention

Workshop Summary Report

Floods and Storms

Rotterdam, 13 May 2012

Rotterdam, 13 May 2012

About Ecorys

At Ecorys we aim to deliver real benefit to society through the work we do. We offer research, consultancy and project management, specialising in economic, social and spatial development. Focusing on complex market, policy and management issues we provide our clients in the public, private and not-for-profit sectors worldwide with a unique perspective and high-value solutions. Ecorys’ remarkable history spans more than 80 years. Our expertise covers economy and competitiveness; regions, cities and real estate; energy and water; transport and mobility; social policy, education, health and governance. We value our independence, integrity and partnerships. Our staff are dedicated experts from academia and consultancy, who share best practices both within our company and with our partners internationally.

Ecorys Netherlands has an active CSR policy and is ISO14001 certified (the international standard for environmental management systems). Our sustainability goals translate into our company policy and practical measures for people, planet and profit, such as using a 100% green electricity tariff, purchasing carbon offsets for all our flights, incentivising staff to use public transport and printing on FSC or PEFC certified paper. Our actions have reduced our carbon footprint by an estimated 80% since 2007.

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1Background information: Disaster prevention in Europe study

1.1The Good Practices programme and the study

1.2Working definitions of key terms

1.3Progress to date

1.4Workshops – general proceedings

1.5Next steps for study completion

2Floods and Storms Workshop (2.5.2012)

2.1Practices highlighted as particularly good

2.1.1Additional good practices to be considered for inclusion in inventory

2.1.2Particularly good practices from the initial inventory to be shortlisted

2.2Criteria for selecting good practices

2.3Ideas for guideline development on minimum standards for disaster prevention

2.3.1What should the guidelines for minimum standards look like?

2.3.2Ideas for minimum standards on horizontal measures

1Background information: Disaster prevention in Europe study

The first chapter briefly introduces the overall study. It offers the definition for key terminology and provides an overview of the workshop proceedings for all five thematic workshops that took place in late April and early May 2012.

1.1The Good Practices programme and the study

In November 2009 the Council agreed upon conclusions for a Community Framework on disaster prevention within the EU, setting an EU prevention policy framework which aims to increase the resilience to disasters and foster a culture of prevention and risk management across the EU. The conclusions specifically refer to the importance of Member States sharing knowledge on good practices for prevention of disasters.

Furthermore, the Council conclusions call upon the Commission, together with the Member States, to develop guidelines on minimum standards for hazard-specific disaster prevention, in particular for those risks shared by MemberStates or regions in different Member States.

To establish good practice guidelines that build upon existing knowledge, the Commission has launched a disaster prevention good practice programme: “Strengthening the EU disaster management capacity – Good Practices on Disaster Prevention”.

A consortium of consultants (Ecorys, CIMA, CGIAM and UEA) conducts a study on behalf of, and in close cooperation with, the Commission. The main purpose of the project is to derive ‘minimum standards’ or principles of good practice in disaster prevention in Europe.

Afirst step towards reaching this objective is to develop a non-exhaustive list and preliminary assessment of good practices in disaster prevention in Member States. Non-European practices have been included in the list, where deemed appropriate. The list would facilitate sharing of good practices across Member States and ultimately lead to the establishment of common minimum standards to support good policy and decision-making, and effective implementation of preventive measures by the competent national authorities.

The study is divided into three tasks: (1) collect a non-exhaustive list of practices in disaster prevention for all themes, in all Member States and Civil Protection Mechanism in Member States; (2) establish what constitutes a good practice in disaster prevention and select an illustrative list of good practices across a range of activities based on a set of selection criteria, and (3) translate these good practices into minimum standards for disaster prevention.

In order to create an inventory and assessment of good practices in different thematic areas, prior to drafting minimum standards on a more horizontal (multi-hazard, cross-sectoral) level, five themes have been identified: (1) horizontal measures (multi-sectoral and/or multi-hazard measures and practices); (2) earthquakes and tsunamis; (3) floods and storms; (4) heat waves, droughts and forest fires; and (5) other measures, especially dangerous goods transports and industrial hazards.

1.2Working definitions of key terms

To better understand what the core concepts of the study are, the study team has developed, in close consultations with the client, working definitions of good practices and minimum standards.

Our ‘working definition’ of disasterprevention is: Measures taken to avoid or minimize the adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters. The study team has approached disaster prevention quite broadly, taking into consideration preventive “build back better” measures implemented during recovery phase through prevention and mitigation to the risk transfers to the preparedness and early warning systems. Therefore, certain recovery and preparedness measures that inform disaster prevention have been included in the scope of this study.

Our ‘working definition’ of agood practice is: A measure for which there is demonstrable evidence of effectiveness in increasing prevention, and for which there is demonstrable evidence that it is appropriate and feasible to apply. Note that demonstrable evidence refers to project data clearly showing effectiveness, feasibility, etc. or other information sources, such as an audit or expert review of the measure.

The purpose of the project is to derive guidelines for ‘minimum standards’ or principles of good practice in disaster prevention in Europethat builds upon existing sectoral legislation and initiatives, such as the Floods Directive or the SEVESO Directive. The guidelines for minimum standards will be non-binding and aim to fill gaps in current legislation, primarily on a horizontal and multi-hazard level. The minimum standards are understood as the minimum level of quality in disaster prevention that MS should obtain. Minimum standards should provide effective methodologies for trans-disciplinary (multi-hazard) and multi-sectoral co-operation: they should serve as models for generating policies and initiatives across MS for the effective implementation of preventive measures by the competent nationalauthorities. They should be feasible and applicable as demonstrated by existing good practices.

As an illustrative example of what minimum standards could look like, participants at the workshop suggested that horizontal minimum standards could give guidance on:

1. Integrated governance;
2. Financing mechanisms;
3. Disaster loss data collection;
4. Risk assessment;
5. Harmonised terminology;
6. Monitoring and audit against performance criteria;
7. Inclusion of disaster prevention (i.e. disaster risk reduction) in education;
8. Capacity building for professionals;
9. One portal for risk information (all hazards included) and integrated approach to awareness raising; and,
10. Cross-border cooperation.

1.3Progress to date

Step 1 (collection of best practices) of the project is considered completed even if the study team keeps an open door for further entries from experts. Over the last year an initial thematic inventory of over 450 practices across Europe has been compiled with the assistance of experts and Member States' authorities. It should be noted here that all Civil Protection Mechanism Countries as well as some countries outside Europe have been contacted for input on all five themes. However, not all MS have responded to the request to submit entries for all themes. This can be attributed to a lack of priority given to this study by the contact persons; but also can be due to the fact that the particular country did not see one of their practices as a particularly good practice, but rather as a commonly-accepted general practice and therefore did not report it in the inventory.

The team has also begun to cluster different practices into separate categories to facilitate overview and analysis.The categories chosen are: Organisational (legislation, strategies and financing, etc.), Informational (awareness raising, training, etc.) and Structural (infrastructure, building codes, etc.).

There is now a need to further narrow down the list of practices to those that best illustrate good practice across a range of activities and start the process of translation towards minimum standards.

1.4Workshops – general proceedings

To verify the results of the study to date and start the translation of good practices into minimum standards, five expert workshops were organised with experts from Member States, academia, and international organisations. Each theme was allocated a one-day workshop. For a list of workshop participants, please see annex A.

The workshops aimed to collect feedback on and verify the list of practice collected by peer groups. The also sought to define criteria and distinguish a “good” practice from a general practice and generate ideas on how to translate good practices into minimum standards.

The main questions for the workshop participants were as follows:

1. Is there any important good practice missing from draft list of practices?
2. What distinguishes a good practice from a general practice?
3. Which criteria could be used to identify a good practice?

1. What should or shouldn’t be included when drafting guidelines?

The workshops proved instrumental to (a) distil the good practices from the large inventory of 450 practices, and (b) to better understand what really makes a practice ‘good’. The discussion and conclusions from all workshops therefore helpedto ensure robust and commonly accepted study results before drafting guidelines for minimum standards.

In the beginning of each workshop, the European Commission, DG ECHO, highlighted to the participants the importance of the study and the individual workshops in the larger context of their policy work on disaster prevention. Overall, disaster prevention and disaster risk reduction are becoming more important worldwide. The clear link between disaster prevention and other topics, such as climate change adaptation, the search for energy, and so forth have increased the need for political action. In EU policy, disaster prevention is still a relatively new topic. Nevertheless, the European Commission has now proposed in its new civil protection legislation that prevention should be seen as equally important to response and recovery in the disaster management cycle. DG ECHO has also realised a real need to further internationalise their disaster prevention activities by better cooperating with international organisations to ensure a more harmonised global approach.

DG ECHO pointed out that good practice identification and knowledge exchange are a well accepted practices for policy development in the EU. With the good practices programme, DG ECHO would like to go a step further and transfer the identified good practices into non-binding guidelines for minimum standards on disaster prevention. It is well understood that it remains an ambitious challenge, in particular since practice may be culture and space bound which could make application across MS difficult.

DG ECHO is not looking to replace already developed policy in specific themes and sectors, but rather construct more general guidelines on cross-cutting issues, e.g. risk assessment methods, building a knowledge base (lack of comparable data), risk management planning, financing (how can financing instruments such as the Structural Funds incorporate disaster prevention investments; role of insurance mechanisms[1]), governance issues, role new technologies can play in future prevention measures (is it worth developing specific incentives?), etc. Such approach is in line with the overall EU prevention strategy, which takes a holistic (multi-hazard) view. Potentially a few sector-specific issues could be addressed in the guidelines as well, but only if they are not yet addressed in any theme-specific European legislation or initiatives.

1.5Next steps for study completion

Based on the insights and feedback received at the workshops, the good practices lists on each of the themes will now be finalised. In some cases this includes additional follow-up interviews or questionnaires with selected working groups or experts.

Finally, the ideas for drafting guidelines for minimum standards will then be assessed in more detail and included in the final report of this study. All thematic good practice inventories and the final report will be made available on the European Commission’s CLIMATE-ADAPT Portal (

Further, DG ECHO and the entire study team would like to invite all the experts that have contributed thus far to remain involved in the process. We would like to send draft reports for your review. Later this year, the European Commission also plans to organise a meeting with all Member States as well as thematic experts in order to discuss the study outcomes and next steps towards the development of the guidelines for minimum standards in disaster prevention.

2Floods and Storms Workshop (2.5.2012)

Floods are the most common and most costly disasters in Europe. It is one of the hazard types for which specific sectoral legislation exists already at European level. Overall, the workshop on floods and storms has really helped the project team see how to best interact the minimum standards guidelines with existing legislation and initiatives. It is interesting to analyse how one can learn from the well-developed experience on implementing the EU Flood Directive and related matters within Working Group F for the other focus themes of this project (earthquakes and tsunamis, heatwaves and droughts and forest fires, industrial risk) – many of which have not yet benefitted from such structured and extensive guidance and information exchange.

At the beginning of the workshop DG ECHO clarified that the guidelines on minimum standards for disaster prevention take on a horizontal perspective and are aimed at filling current gaps; they do not intend to duplicate any work that has already been carried out in sectoral legislation and guidance, such as the Floods Directive. The minimum standards guidelines are also not intended to directly help the implementation of the Floods Directive. The guidelines will be formulated as non-binding recommendations on a general, multi-hazard level; and may include some specific good practice examples as a means for more detailed explanation and illustration. The guidelines will focus on those areas where there is a clear added value for an EU role.

2.1Practices highlighted as particularly good

The first session of the day focussed on giving participants the opportunity to point out any practices they consider as particularly good, but that may currently be missing from the initial inventory of practices. Further, participants were asked to highlight any of the practices in the initial inventory that they can confirm as particularly good.

2.1.1Additional good practices to be considered for inclusion in inventory

The workshop highlighted some gaps in the initial list of good practices that the study team will fill in after the completion of the workshop, in particular by sending around a tailored letter to the members of Working Group F requesting their contribution of any national good practices they feel should be included in the inventory because they showcase good practice in one of these missing gap areas. Additionally, available reports from Working Group F will also be evaluated for potential additional good practice examples.

The workshop participants felt that measures for the following themes were currently lacking or insufficient:

• Monitoring and auditing (e.g. differences in flood event data collection systems – top down versus bottom up approaches - in UK versus Ireland);
• Finance mechanisms, including insurance (e.g. UK pilot programme making funds available through a nationally financed scheme run by local authorities to make financing of prevention measures available to individual households);
• Coastal andmarine flooding prevention , such as the Dutch and UK storm surge alert systems;
• Insurance mechanisms to enhance prevention measures;
• Research project outcomes that have been adopted/implemented (e.g. the region of Emilia-Romagna implemented the findings of the MICORE project on establishing a data inventory of coastal defences; and
• Education (for professionals).

Furthermore, it was noted that the primary focus of the initial good practice inventory has been on floods, not storms. If possible, some additional good practices on storm prevention should be added when revising the inventory.

The Flood Resilient Cities initiative was confirmed as a very important good practice measure. The experts suggested to report this as one single good practice measure that is being implemented in several Member States.