Notes from Geneva By Charlotte Vye-Brown and Susanne Sargeant

BGS scientists, from left to right,
John Rees, Charlotte Vye-Brown, Susanne Sargeant
This week BGS scientists from the Volcanology, Seismology and Geoscience in Society teams have been at the 4th session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction: ‘Invest today for a safer tomorrow: Resilient people, resilient planet’, in Geneva, Switzerland. 

The Global Platform is hosted by the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction and the meeting brought together around 3500 people from 170 countries representing national and regional governments, civil society organisations and communities, academia, the private sector, and humanitarian and development organisations. The focus of the discussions was how this diverse group can work together to support disaster risk management and reduction to reduce losses (averaged at $16.2 million per hour since 2000) and build a more resilient world. Discussions from this Global Platform are being synthesised to assist in the development of the successor to the Hyogo Framework for Action from 2015. This is the global policy framework that guides efforts to build resilience to natural disasters. Its successor will build on the progress made since 2005 at local, national and global scales. 

Part of the work presented at this Global Platform has been the Global Assessment Report for 2013. This report delivers ready to use risk data mapped at the global scale to support a comparative assessment of the risk posed from hazards and the potential impact on lives, livelihoods and assets critical to the functioning of communities.  BGS are working in collaboration with partners around the world as part of the Global Volcano Model network to deliver, for the first time, a volcano section for the next report (GAR15) to be released in 2015. We will, be establishing a relative global assessment of volcanic threat, taking into account volcanic hazards, monitoring capacity, population and critical infrastructure exposure.  The GVM network will also produce stochastic models of volcanic ash fall and risk case studies


We also send huge congratulations to our friends and colleagues from the National Alliance for Risk Reduction and Response Initiative (NARRI) in Bangladesh. NARRI have been awarded the UN-Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction at the Global Platform for demonstrating the benefit of collaboration in building resilient communities.  



Dr Charlotte Vye-Brown, Dr Susanne Sargeant (photos from @BGSvolcanology & Dr John Rees

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