This topic runs from the 23 September to 3 October and will focus on the practical development of indicators and how they can be applied to the measurement of disaster risk reduction.

A summary of the first topic will be prepared and distributed shortly. We were very pleased with the level and quality of participation, though we note that it did not focus tightly on which indicators might be useful and appropriate but ranged across the topic. The first part of the dialogue allowed a wide range of opinions to be expressed which established a useful context to move forward to look directly at indicators and their application. Very little reference was made to any of the suggested reading and we hope use will be made of this in the next phase. We have a recommendation for reading below. We ask the question about the reading we have recommended of whether the background material on criteria for benchmarks and indicators is useful in terms of monitoring successful implementation of the Hyogo Framework at national level.

For discussion and feedback:

1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?
2. Who should be accountable for these tasks and what are their roles and responsibilities?
3. How are indicators themselves to be weighted and ranked?

The number and span of potential indicators is very great and any choice has to list indicators in a priority order, or perhaps to suggest a number of subject areas, in which a number of indicators may be nested, as priorities.

Implementation of the Hyogo Framework will draw upon political commitment and policy frameworks but equally crucial will be the structures, procedures, resources and methods used to develop and implement indicators and to collect and analyse the resulting data. This is a pragmatic task and we invite comments on applied aspects to measurement of progress towards risk reduction.

Equally important for the implementation of the Hyogo Framework is how the selected indicators are to be ranked and who is to be accountable for this ranking process. This applies at national, sub-national and local level, always with a mind that the primary use of any indicators will be at national level.

We would like participants to focus on these questions and where they are able to provide examples and case studies.

This topic represents a practical dimension to the measurement of disaster risk reduction progress

In our experience the usual indicators of disaster risk are:

• Numbers of deaths
• Numbers of casualties
• Property loss measured in financial terms.

Progress in disaster risk reduction, conversely is measured by reductions in the above or by their absence.

But these do not reflect the full range of risks and losses and may not be in priority order. For example are these indicators of individual loss normally, not family, community or national losses? There are also a range of other damage and losses. How, for example, is lifelong disability or bereavement to be compared with property loss? How are quantifiable losses to be compared with qualitative losses, such as loss of heritage and culture and leadership capacity? How do we measure the loss of a generation (for example following the Tsunami of December 2004) some villages lost most or all of their children) or the loss of a social dimension (where all or most of the women of a community may be killed)? Again with HIV/Aids entire generations of a community or a country may be lost? How are these sort of losses to be weighed, where the significance of the loss is more than just the total number of people? How is injury to be measured when recovery from some injuries is measured in days or weeks and for other injuries in months or years?

We now recognise that there are a number of cross cutting vulnerabilities including gender, disability, ethnicity and age. How are these, in practical ways, to be included in the setting of priorities?

We refer again to the Hyogo Framework and the list of proposed activities to reduced disaster risk.

Together with Background material on criteria for benchmarks and indicators and particularly the “Brief note on discussion of the Working Group on indicators to measure progress in relation to the Hyogo Framework Implementation - Eleventh Session of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Disaster Reduction. 2005”we are suggesting the reading of: The United Nations World Water Development Report 2003 Water for People, Water for Life: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr (Please note the list of key indicators mentioned in Chapter 3)

10.10.05 Gerardo Huertas, Costa Rica

Dear Sirs:
Sorry for the low participation in the dialogue, but we are indeed busy with the floods in Costa Rica and El Salvador.

04.10.05 Carlos Uribe / Lizette Flores, Mexico

Dear moderators and participants:

• A historic research about disasters that allow us to revise the pros and cons of policy decisions and all actors' actions involved.
• Accurate analysis of risk that includes natural phenomena and all kids of social vulnerabilities in the region
• Consider capabilities of different actors such as society, government and private enterprises that can participate in prevention and assessment of disaster.
• Establish this priorities and objectives in policies of joint action that includes a wide variety of participants. Also promoting legislation that corresponds to social, political and economic reality.

• Society/community: they count with organized groups of rescue, medical attention, fundraising for vulnerable groups, also academic groups that discuss and research themes like risk, vulnerability, disaster, that can be useful. Also not organized groups but individuals can be of great help because this people know their community, how people acts and reacts. Big cultural, language and other cleavages can be sort with support of locals.
• Government: they should implement effective policies en disaster assessment. They should coordinate efforts in order to prevent a risk turn into disaster.
• Private enterprises: we all know that they count with the economic resources to invest in research and planning in themes like risks, some of them do it because they know is cheaper to prevent than to rebuild. These enterprises don't risk money investing in places that they know would cost them more. And in fewer amounts they contribute donating money, food, clothes and others.

carlos uribe / lizette flores
Mexico

04-10-05 Mayumi Yamada, Japan

Hi Everyone,

1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?

1. Facilitating stakeholders/consultative meeting;
2. Identification of existing disaster man agement working/network groups in country;
3. Capacity assessment of the potential counterparts;
4. Selection of CBDM case study site in consultation with the potential counterparts and the government;
5. Identification of local community facilitators;
6. Meeting with community members in potential case study sites;
7. PLA exercises for community assessments and training needs assessments with community members and facilitators;
8. Discussion on provisional work plan to support communities;
9. Ensuring community empowerment through good governance.

10. Facilitating community meeting;
11. Identification of existing solidarity groups in community (i.e. women?s/mother?s groups; father?s groups, teacher?s groups etc);
12. Empowerment of the solidarity groups;
13. Empowerment of community facilitators;
14. PLA exercises for community assessments (etc.) as well as training needs assessments to achieve indicators and objectives;
15. Discussion on provisional community work plans to support communities;
16. Participatory monitoring and evaluation; what are/were the benefits for themselves (local residents/community members)?

Do we always need to have such indicators? Such as attitudes, preferences and priorities, so-called ?perception variables?, how would you like to weight and rank for what? If we cannot measure these, we exclude these indicators too?

Mayumi Yamada
Kobe/Hyogo, Japan

03.10.05 L. Ocola, Peru

1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?

• To prepare poverty stricken areas map of the country
• To prepare and document country’s hazards maps for different return periods
• To prepare and document country’s maps on social, economic, and physical vulnerabilities to hazardous natural phenomena and technological events
• To prepare and document country’s social and economic capacities, and resiliency of the communities.
• To analyze the National Development Plan and rank the importance of the aforementioned factors and information according to the peoples’ needs.

03.10.05 Elena Ruth Polanco de Bonilla, El Salvador

Hello to all

The main problems in ours countries, is that the learned lessons are not rescued. The mechanisms to approach the disasters generally do not have much financial support, or there is no pursuit. In El Salvador this situation has improved, thanks to that the Ministry of Interior are heading the efforts and organizing better the different actors so that they relationships and they give his contributions in effective form. At the Universities is much boarding in the races of Sciences of the Health and every time there is greater participation and interesting of the communitarian Mayorships and communal heads to become jumbled in the different tasks.

Despite it is needed the communication in network, and a lot of social commitment from all the citizens. In such a way that if there were more local organization of the community, updating diagnostics, and a system of monitoring of the disasters with a good logìstics support, the problems are solving in effective form.

Probably the indicators that demonstrate to us that the organization and the participation are effective are:

1. Local plans of boarding of Disasters working and improving with support.
2. Financial support in the budget like law of the State.
3. Human resources enabled and stimulating to new prospects.
4. Mechanisms of management to protect the natural resources working effectively.
5. Leadership and communitarian organization working actively .

Best regards,
Dra. Elena Ruth Polanco de Bonilla.
University of El Salvador. Central America

03.10.05 Enoch Harun Opuka, Mozambique

Colleagues

I see a way of implementing the indicators by starting at the village level. This should be done by those who work with communities (NGOs and Government extension workers) to use participatory methodologies when planning community projects. The use of Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) methodologies could go a long way. The methodology could be used to sensitize the community to form lobby groups to push government to act nationally. Policies should then be put in place to mitigate disasters. It is then that this can be pushed to be in the school curriculum. For countries that are prone to disasters, the local universities could introduce special courses (certificate and diploma level) in disaster management.

30.09.05 Roger Jones, Australia

A contribution to the Topic 2 dialogue

Dear Colleagues

I am responding to our Moderators call for contributors to address the issue of linking DRR and sustainable development (cover note to Topic 1: Summary, 28 Sep), noting also their comment in the Summary itself that DRR needs to be incorporated into routine activities of Government, business and society and linked intimately with development activity (Topic 1: Summary, p.4).

I am a practitioner/consultant to the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission's Community Risk Programme and a participant (as a member of SOPAC's High Level Advocacy Team) in the recently-completed process of developing a draft regional Pacific Islands counterpart to HFA.

As such, I am only too well aware of the difficulties, often referred to by contributors to our Topic 1 discussions, in "mainstreaming" DRR into incountry policies and processes supporting sustainable development, poverty reduction, environmental protection et al . While I applaud the ISDR proposals for resolving the existing "dilemma" (their term) between efforts to achieve the MDGs and efforts to decrease the levels of disaster risk (ISDR contribution, Topic 1: MDGs and DRR, 28 Sep), I must agree with the WB's Saroj Kumar Jha (in his Topic 1 contribution, 22 Sep) that such proposals tend to be developed from a disaster management lens, which goes against the basic philosophy of mainstreaming and that we continue to be quite sectoral in our approach.

In the Pacific, as I suspect almost everywhere else, the reality has been that in the past disaster/emergency management practice (preparedness, response and relief/recovery planning, resourcing , training and operations) has rarely been "incorporated into routine activities of Government, business and society", and disaster managers themselves have usually found themselves operating in "silos", largely isolated from mainstream government policy-making, systems and arrangements. There is a clear danger that the same fate could befall even the most earnest of disaster risk reduction practitioners.

We have sought to address this issue through focusing on the process of managing disaster risk and examining the extent to which this management process could be integrated with managing risk to "routine activities" at national level.
We had noted that HFA declared, as one of its general considerations needing to be taken into account in determining its 2005-2015 priorities for action [HFA para 13.(c), drawn from the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation paras 37 and 65]:
" An integrated, multi-hazard approach to disaster risk reduction should be factored into policies, planning and programming related to sustainable development, relief, rehabilitation, and recovery activities in post-disaster and post-conflict situations in disaster prone countries", and had established, as one of its five priorities for action, "Reduce the underlying risk factors" (HFA paras 14.4 and 19).

Yet while both ISDR (in its publication "Living with Risk" http://www.unisdr.org/eng/about_isdr/bd-lwr-2004-eng.htm ) and UNDP (in its publication "Reducing Disaster Risk") had offered definitions of "disaster risk management", albeit with slight differences, both were largely silent as to the risk management process itself.

In 1995, the Australian and New Zealand Standards Associations introduced Standard AS/NZS 4360 Risk Management, which provides a generic guide for the development and implementation of a risk management process involving the establishment of the relevant strategic, organisational and risk management "context" prior to undertaking the fairly traditional risk management steps of the identification, analysis, evaluation and treatment of risks. By 2002 we had developed and commenced the roll-out in the Pacific of a disaster risk management tool, adapted from the Standard and called "Comprehensive Hazard and Risk Management" (CHARM).

CHARM has been endorsed by a number of national governments and is currently in widespread use. Acknowledging that there are some inadequacies (which we are seeking to address) in the model as it is currently being applied, we believe that it has now been convincingly demonstrated that:

• a validated and well-documented risk management process is fundamental to effective disaster risk reduction arrangements;
• "disaster risk management", addressing both disaster risk reduction and disaster management needs, must be recognised as a sub-set of the necessary processes designed, on a multi-hazard, multi-agency basis, to treat all forms of risk to national sustainable development, poverty alleviation and environmental protection policies and practices;
• disaster risk treatments are essentially "residual risk" treatments (through preparedness, response and relief/recovery plans, resourcing , training and operational arrangements), needed to treat those risks to national development etc. which are unable to be treated, are insufficiently treated or have been unforeseen as needing to be treated, in standard treatments of risk (reduce the likelihood, reduce the consequences, transfer or avoid the risk), and
• all proposed major national development policies, programs, activities and proposals need to be subject to whole-of-government, comprehensive and integrated risk management processes, to include "residual risk management" through disaster risk reduction and disaster management arrangements.

Given the limited resources available to small island developing states, such as those in the Pacific with which we deal, these may seem to be substantial demands, but we are finding considerable support for this approach. It helps to break down the walls between the former national planning and disaster management "silos", results in coordinated and integrated national risk management activities and can be shown to be more cost-effective than earlier approaches.

Roger Jones
Director, TEM Consultants Pty Ltd
Member, SOPAC High Level Advocacy Team
Australia

30.09.05 Gia Gaspard Taylor, Trinidad and Tobago

Agreed it is difficult to introduce into the school's curriculum, it mght be possible to do it as a project, involving schools and communities youth groups, well placed advocacy for and on bahalf of the vulnerable and disadantage communities,

30.09.05 Catherine Giovas and Eden Liddelow, Australia

Dear All

I can see a need for frameworks for DRR, such as linking the MDGs and the Hyogo Framework, but I think this may be too ambitious. If all disasters are local just as all loss and grief is personal then so any framewroks need to be built from the ground up. This requires empowerment of local and their communities which may work against high level, strategic frameworks.

I wonder if there is a risk that by striving for broad policy arrangements we lose the local detail and nuance by not recognising that even at national level there can be many differences.
Frameworks need foundations before they need a roof.

regards
Catherine Giovas and Eden Liddelow
Australia

30.09.05 Sarah La Trobe, United Kingdom

Dear Moderators,
Please find attached Tearfund's submission to the online dilaogue as well as the report that we refer to in the submission. I am not sure whether you are able to attach the report to the online dilaogue so that people can view it?
Thanks ever so much,

Sarah La Trobe
Public Policy Officer, Environment and Disasters
Tearfund
020 8943 7962
United Kingdom

• Mainstreaming disaster risk reduction: a tool for development organisations
  Visions of Risk
• Indicators for measuring mainstreaming
  

29.09.05 Tomukum Chia, Cameroon

DEAR ALL,

We thank you all
TOMUKUM CHIA
GLOCECOHADIM-CAMEROON.

28.09.05 S.Annamalai, Singapore

Dear All
Please see my inputs for the above topic

1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?
Risk assessment, analysis and risk data's for all kind of disasters should be the priorities while setting indicators and objectives.

2. Who should be accountable for these tasks and what are their roles and responsibilities?
International experts consist of various disciplines should be involved to get a model frame work and these model framework should be communicated to national level teams.

3. How are indicators themselves to be weighted and ranked? The indicators should be weighted and ranked by considering the following factors
a. Preserve Human life
b. Ensure Human rites
c. Protect essential human needs (food, clothing's, medical and shelter)
d. Quick recovery
e. After disaster supports

Regards
S.Annamalai
National University of Singapore

28.09.05 Enrique Castellanos, Cuba

Dear moderators and participants:

I have general comments to cover the questions about the second topic:

1) Three approaches may be found for measuring progress in disaster risk reduction:

1. Completeness of the disaster risk reduction framework (HFA). The agreed framework could be reviewed for every country as a checklist of documents, regulations and organization for reducing disasters risk. The disadvantage is that completing the framework does not mean it?s going to work properly. Other problem is that some indicators may be very subjective as every country has particular ways to cope with disasters.
2. Reducing the disasters losses (expected outcome). This is the final goal at the end and it is simpler to be measured. As a disadvantage, a comparable natural event may not be repeated in the time frame for measuring progress. Other issue already mentioned, new events are more frequent and with higher magnitude which could be difficult the comparison.
3. Reducing a national risk index (multi-hazard risk assessment). Theoretically, if a national multi-hazard risk index is calculated every year, reducing disaster risk may imply decreasing this number. Following the risk equation (R=HxV), however, shows that hazard may be increasing due to climate changes or at least remains the same. Therefore, the great challenge in reducing disaster risk is reducing vulnerability. Other issue here is that practices show disaster does not only happen where there is high risk, but also in areas with lower risk and weak disaster management practices (or weak framework). Moreover, national multi-hazard risk assessment will be very different for one country to another due to hazard differences and data availability (especially in developing countries).

   The three approaches are valid and useful, as they complement each other. UN and NGO's should continue their efforts in order to measure DRR. The practice will certainly provide finding and solutions to the problems mentioned above.

2) During designing indicators it is strongly recommended:

1. "Do not reinvent the wheel". Make a deep study of existing indexes and indicators produced by others UN agencies, ONG's, and other international organizations. Indicators or indexes already available may be very useful.
2. "Keep it as simple as possible but not simpler". Do not produce a very complicated index looking for the correlations between the indicators. During the design of a national vulnerability index we found strong correlation between "density population" and others population indicators (elderly and disability population) and even with other not population indicators. E.g. with a well planned health system the "number of health facilities" must be positive and high correlated with "density population". This will be different among the countries.
3. Designing a national landslide risk assessment model (indicators, standardization, equation, weighting and interpretation) we found six key elements to be considered for modelling :
   - Disaster inventory analysis. It was mentioned its importance by some participants before.
   - Socioeconomic conditions. Differences and similarities between the countries.
   - Physical models. How to consider different disaster types around the World in one international assessment.
   - Data availability. A drawback that usually control the assessment.
   - Level and objective. International level with national resolution. What we are looking for?

3) It is fully understandable the difficulties in setting up social and cultural indicators. There is a gap between different sectors dealing with disasters risk assessment. Social science sector and engineering sector should work more closely in order to produce more measurable indicators and to recognize the priorities among them. We found at the local level that almost any risk assessment model is very useful as it make to local authorities the think about the problems that they are facing and to lock for local solutions in order to solve it. They include social elements automatically during the disaster risk reduction planning. E.g. they could say "this village has high flooding risk, but this people are very difficult to convince about their problem, so we may require extra effort in this area".

4) I read the Chapter 3 WWDR and I see the procedure carried out very well organized. Following the steps proposed could be used in order to develop the assessment model. For getting information on disaster risk reduction practices inCuba , I recommend to read the report produce by Oxfam America at: http://www.oxfamamerica.org/newsandpublications/ publications/research_reports/art7111.html where many examples and case studies are shown. Although it is not the whole picture, some indicators and priorities may be considered from there.

5) An agreement need to be found in order to assign weights to indicators. After recognize objectives and priorities, the relative importance among the indicators in relation to the model goal can be established. The agreement it is usually established by an expert team or by proposals from the whole international community, or a combination of both.

6) I think ISDR in coordination with the national UN representatives and national disaster authorities may set up a system (roles and responsibilities) for a measuring progress on DRR.

I hope these comments may contribute to this topic.

Enrique Castellanos
IGP
Cuba

28.09.05 Naomi Udom, Nigeria

Dear Moderators and Colleagues,

Those accountable for the tasks are; (a) policy makers, (b) disaster & development professionals and (c) the general public

The roles of these policy makers are (i) to develop policies/programmes that address the effective management of any identified disaster risk. This is very important because the risks are the causes of any disaster. (ii) To set into motion the framework such as ministries, agencies and organizations whose missions and mandates are centered on the implementation and application of indicators.

Disaster and development professionals set the pace in identifying the risk, measure the extent to which people could be exposed to them, as well as the level of vulnerability of both individuals and economic property. They also feature prominently in educating the populace and sounding earlier warning of potential disaster, and advising the authorities on the measures through the identified indicators can be effectively implemented. It requires a whole lot of research do all this since the primary aspect of disaster (risk) is always sometimes latent.

The general public bears the weight of the effects of disaster. Today it is estimated that 85% of the people exposed to earthquake, tropical cyclones, floods & drought live in countries having medium or low human development. However, development choice should be sustainable irrespective of the economic status of every country. Though citizens of prosperous countries afford to build durable houses that can withstand earthquakes, haphazard urban development can result from this growth. Thus there is a great responsibility bestowed on the general public to ascertain the identification/implementation and application of these indicators.

Naomi Udom
NASRDA Centre for Basic Space Science,
Nsukka, Nigeria.

27.09.05 Griselia Bohorquez, Venezuela

Hello for all.

27.09.05 Troy Zwanepol, Canada

Hi Everyone,

As one who has worked in first and second line response roles in disasters (from personal disasters to larger scale ones), my version of thinking is more focused from the frontline response perspective. Unfortunately I do not have to experience in the broader view of national and international planning, but I will attempt to give my perspective in that broader scope

1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?

1. Deciding on a common set of rational parameters that can be related to any nation regardless of social or economic status and used for any type of disaster. For example: try to compare countries like the USA versus Brazil versus Jordan versus China. Each has its own unique social and economic status and way of responding to disasters. The indicators should level the playing field so that they can be made comparable.
2. Indicators should specify specific main disasters (hurricane, flood, earthquake etc ) and have an overall rating. The overall rating should include a catchall to include the abnormal events.
3. Deciding on a rationalized approach to achieve the objectives while talking into account the social, economic and response capability of each nation. Keeping the approached based more on what each nation is capable of, while working as a whole towards an agreeable universal standard approach.

26.09.05 Dewald van Niekerk, South Africa

Dear Moderators/Participants,

Seems like these days I?m late for everything, but I must say this is the first time that I?m a week late for a conference. Be that as it may, I would like to respond to the second topic but would like to send a follow-up on the first topic if I may.

My response to your questions below:


1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?

a.) Determine a sequence of events. What do we need first, the chicken or the egg?
b.) I think that it is extremely necessary that we (whatever country we might represent) firstly have a clear understanding of the risk dynamic in our country. Therefore we need to determine where we are and where we want to go BEFORE we can aim to measure what we are doing., e.g. GAP analysis, cost-benefit analysis, risk assessments, etc.
c.) We need to communicate and create an understanding of disaster risk management across disciplines, i.e. what does disaster risk mean in our own context?
d.) Ensure high-level and strategic buy-in into the concept of disaster risk reduction and disaster risk management.
e.) Address all disaster risk related issues across sectors and level of government.

Example: In the South African context we have followed a strict legislation and policy route. Though our legislation we can enforce the incorporation of disaster risk management into development planning as well as the creation of different multi-sectoral structures at all government levels. For the purpose of implementation, our national policy framework is structured around certain Key Performance Areas and Enablers (see http://sandmc.pwv.gov.za/NewSite/Framework1.htm ). Our National Disaster Management Centre has also developed preliminary evaluation tools for the implementation of disaster risk management at all levels (same link as above). I must say that I am not very confident that the evaluation tools above will have any significant impact on disaster risk reduction in the short term, but it serves as a good benchmarking exercise for provincial and local governments in the implementation of disaster risk management.


2. Who should be accountable for these tasks and what are their roles and responsibilities?

Accountability lies with all governments (national disaster risk reduction platforms). Their roles would be to ensure that disaster risk management is taken seriously as a policy priority, and that the necessary financial backing accompanies this commitment.


3. How are indicators themselves to be weighted and ranked?

I question the above. Why is it necessary to weight [and rank] such indicators? This sounds a lot like ANOTHER UN ranking system. I think that the roll-out of disaster risk management measures differs significantly from one country to the next. Would the weighting of indicators not result in an academic exercise? I think the presence of indicators are the key and not the supposed and subjective ?level? of attainment. I?m very sceptical on this issue. Maybe this can be customised for each individual country?

My PhD research focussed on a compehensive framework for multi-sector DRR in South Africa. Interested parties can download my thesis at http://acds.co.za/dvnPhdnew2.pdf . Here I have tried to provide a "checklist" for all levels and government function as indicators.

To me the indicator of disaster risk is not the number of deaths or casualties. If we use these as indicators we are measuring our failed attempts. They are therefore disaster indicators and not disaster risk indicators. I think much better ways to measure disaster risk are to look at a linkage between development-, livelihoods-, vulnerability indicators and possible hazard impact magnitudes. This in itself assumes vast quantities of accurate data and information.


Kind regards,
Dr. Dewald van Niekerk
Director: African Centre for Disaster Studies
North-West University
Potchefstroom Campus
School of Social and Government Studies
Private Bag X6001
Potchefstroom
North West Province
2520
South Africa
Tel: +27 (0)18 299 1634
Fax: +27 (0)18 293 5266
Web site: http://acds.co.za

22.09.05 Philip Buckle and Graham Marsh, Moderators

We are starting topic 2 of this online dialogue, Implementation and application of indicators and welcome your continued participation. Already we have well over 400 registered participants and greatly appreciate all the comments offered so far. This topic will run from 23 September to 3 October.

For discussion and feedback:

1. What tasks are involved in setting priorities for indicators and objectives?
   
2. Who should be accountable for these tasks and what are their roles and responsibilities?
   
3. How are indicators themselves to be weighted and ranked?

Implementation of the Hyogo Framework will draw upon political commitment and policy frameworks but equally crucial will be the structures, procedures, resources and methods used to develop and implement indicators and to collect and analyse the resulting data. This is a pragmatic task and we invite comments on applied aspects to measurement of progress towards risk reduction.

We would like participants to focus on these questions and to provide examples and case studies.

This topic represents a practical dimension to the measurement of disaster risk reduction progress

In our experience the usual indicators of disaster risk are:

• Numbers of deaths
• Numbers of casualties
• Property loss measured in financial terms.

Progress in disaster risk reduction, conversely is measured by reductions in the above or by their absence.

But these do not reflect the full range of risks and losses and may not be in priority order. For example are these indicators of individual loss normally, not family, community or national losses? There are also a range of other damage and losses. How, for example, is lifelong disability or bereavement to be compared with property loss? How are quantifiable losses to be compared with qualitative losses, such as loss of heritage and culture and leadership capacity? How do we measure the loss of a generation (for example following the Tsunami of December 2004) some villages lost most or all of their children) or the loss of a social dimension (where all or most of the women of a community may be killed)? Again with HIV/Aids entire generations of a community or a country may be lost? How are these sorts of losses to be weighed, where the significance of the loss is more than just the total number of people? How is injury to be measured when recovery from some injuries is measured in days or weeks and for other injuries in months or years?

Together with Background material on criteria for benchmarks and indicators and particularly the “Brief note on discussion of the Working Group on indicators to measure progress in relation to the Hyogo Framework Implementation - Eleventh Session of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Disaster Reduction. 2005” we are suggesting the reading of: The United Nations World Water Development Report 2003 Water for People, Water for Life: http://www.unesco.org/water/wwap/wwdr (Please note the list of key indicators mentioned in Chapter 3

Philip Buckle and Graham Marsh
Moderators