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Discuss with forum members your thoughts on the parameters used in the latest World Risk Report in developing the risk indices for individual countries. Do you feel comfortable with the process and results that come out of this?
With parameters used in the last WRR assessing individual countries risk i feel it enables assisting aid orgs and governments to be able to prepare for the possibility of disasters taking place in different regions around the world. It may not be able to say the where and the when nor the extremities of a disaster but it shows that the potential is there.
It is a very useful indicator that evaluates the exposure to natural hazards..
I cannot get on to the WRR 2015 pages (no longer exists) but FEWS NET certainly provides excellent bulletins about current and forthcoming risk events. FEWS enables all actors to see where in the world has the most likely need for support. With this forewarning, actors should be able to provide facilities either on the ground or in an anticipated phase before the threatened risk eventuates. It all at least lessens the damage done or provides early aid.
Think I’ve found a functional link! http://collections.unu.edu/eserv/UNU:3303/WRR_2015_engl_online.pdf
While it’s a good summary, the assessed indices do not appear to be as comprehensive as the DRR ones are. (There’s a job in here for you Chris!) There are also a few indices used to make generalisations about a given country’s resilience / the inverse of its assessed vulnerability by the World Risk Report’s calculations. For example, the number of physicians per 10,000 inhabitants and the number of hospital beds per 10,000 inhabitants are used to calculate a given nation’s capacity to mount an adequate medical response to a disaster, or cope with its aftermath. Needless to say, there are far many more elements in healthcare systems than physicians and hospital beds – primary care facilities, first responders (e.g. paramedics), nursing care, provisional of adequate medicines, the type of physician available (surgeon? GP? Critical care provider? Psychiatrist? All very important roles in a disaster but all with different skill sets!), the facilities each hospital bed has (not every ‘bed’ is equal – intensive care bed? Are the beds close to emergency equipment? Are they close to each other and thus enabling easy dissemination of infectious diseases?), etc. etc… Furthermore, there are better indicators of a healthcare system’s ability to cope, but many of those would require adequate assessments undertaken in the DRR / pre-disaster stage of the DRR cycle. So while this is a nice overall comparision of these countries, I would be hesitant to call it comprehensive or definitive.
Agreed with Matt and Michael B: FEWS NET seems a bit more comprehensive!
The 2016 World Risk Report can also be found on http://weltrisikobericht.de/english/
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