A multidisciplinary consortium of leading European universities, research institutes, companies, NGOs, and practitioners in the field of disaster risk reduction has started a major EU-funded project called MYRIAD-EU to improve our understanding, assessment, and management of disasters caused by combinations of different kinds of natural hazards (e.g. climate, hydrological, geological, and biological hazards).
MYRIAD-EU’s vision is to catalyse the required paradigm shift in disaster risk management, by co-developing the first harmonized framework for multi-hazard, multi-sector, extreme and systemic risk management. The overall aim is that by the end of MYRIAD-EU policy-makers, decision-makers, and practitioners will be able to develop forward-looking disaster risk management pathways that assess trade-offs and synergies of various strategies across sectors, hazards, and scales. The core scientific activity is to enable this through the co-development of cutting-edge knowledge, products, and services. This is done together with stakeholders (in five multi-scale Pilots (North Sea, Canary Islands, Scandinavia, Danube, Veneto). Each Pilot focuses on forward-looking DRM solutions to real-world sustainability challenges faced by six key sectors: infrastructure & transport, food & agriculture, ecosystems & forestry, energy, finance, and tourism.
MYRIAD-EU’s pilots should lead to improved risk management that will directly benefit the 155 million people in those regions, with a summed GDP of €5.1 billion (28% of total E.U. GDP), as well as the ecosystems of those regions. The project willl design not only a framework, but corresponding methods, and tools that can be used to improve forward-looking risk management throughout the E.U. (and elsewhere), which is essential and urgent given that disaster risk is projected to show large and sustained increases throughout the 21st century.
Stefan Hochrainer-Stigler from SYRR is the project lead from the IIASA side and additionally is coordinating the development of the Multi-Hazard and Multi-Risk Framework as well as the Danube Pilot Study WPs. Sebastian Poledna from EM is leading the Agent-Based Modelling part which will be used within the Pilot Study areas to estimate spill-over effects due to multi-risk situations.