ENHANCE: Novel Multi-sector Partnerships in Disaster Risk Management

The main goal of the ENHANCE project was to develop and analyse innovative ways to manage natural hazard risks. It was key to the development of new multi-sector partnerships that aimed to reduce or redistribute risk, and increase resilience of societies. 

Impact
The ENHANCE project played a major role in further streamlining the merging realms of climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR). For this, the ENHANCE project was actively engaged with its partner UNISDR in the UN Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on Risk Financing, and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. The ENHANCE project contributed by: 

• Creating a better understanding of risk and evidence-based and risk-informed public policies by introduction new risk assessment methods and data; 
• Managing risk by means of assessing the pros and cons of novel Multi Sectoral Partnerships. This risk-based approach has been actively communicated at a high policy level through UNISDR and UNFCCC, but also to the private sector such as Munich RE, Port of Rotterdam and Austrian railways.

Due to its focus on economic instruments, and particularly on insurance, the project conducted an evaluation of the different economic instruments used within all case studies, including the EU Solidarity Fund and the U.K Flood RE program. These are both risk transfer mechanisms to compensate households and EU member states when they experience losses from natural disasters. The evaluation showed that, under the assumption of future developments such as climate change, increased efforts in risk reduction measures are needed to maintain viable risk transfer systems. 

Prof. Jeroen Aerts (VU Amsterdam): “We developed a method to detect indirect economic effects in areas not directly affected, which account for up to 40% of the total damage.” 

The concepts developed in the ENHANCE project are used in the MYRIAD-EU project (funded under H2020) where they are being applied to a multi-risk setting in the development of the first harmonised framework for multi-hazard, multi-sector, systemic risk management. In addition, ENHANCE’s results are directly being used in MIRACA (funded under Horizon Europe), which is developing an evidence-based decision support toolkit to catalyze and empower the implementation of adaptation measures for critical infrastructure throughout Europe.

More info: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/308438, https://www.myriadproject.eu, https://miraca-project.eu 

FP7 - Specfic Programme "Cooperation": Environment