WEXICOM is an interdisciplinary research project contributing to an optimal use of weather forecasts, with a focus on severe weather and warnings. Funded within the Hans Ertel Centre for Weather Research, the project is a collaboration between meteorology (Freie Universität Berlin), social sciences (Disaster Research Unit, Research Forum on Public Safety and Security, German Committee for Disaster Reduction), and psychology (Max Planck Institute for Human Development). The ultimate goal of this inter- and transdisciplinary approach is to facilitate transparent and effective communication of risks and uncertainties for individual user groups.

In recent years, heavy rainfall events and their consequences have received increased media attention, as they can cause great damage within a very short time due to short, heavy rainfall. The short advance warning period poses a challenge in terms of prevention.

The project "Precaution against heavy rainfall events and measures for water-sensitive urban development" aims to analyse the status of heavy rainfall precaution in Germany in order to obtain a systematic overview of available instruments and measures. With the help of the work on the status quo, needs for action at local, regional and federal level are to be identified in order to provide possible solutions for improving disaster prevention in the final step.

adelphi, UP Transfer and DKKV worked on the project, which was funded by the Federal Environment Agency (UBA), from January 2017 to April 2018. The work of the DKKV focused on warnings, hotspots and environmental influences during heavy rainfall events.

Over the past ten years, the number of people affected by humanitarian crises and disasters has doubled whereas the overall budgets for humanitarian relief assistance even have tripled. At least 80 percent of humanitarian funding is allocated to refugees and forcedly displaced people - in 2014 the UN has recorded more than 51 Million displaced people. The expected future demands for humanitarian assistance will grow even further, but the existing humanitarian system is already overstretched. Thus, there is strong demand to explore more efficient and effective tools and structures.
Ban Ki-moon, The UN’s Secretary General, in 2013 took up the initiative to call for the first ever World Humanitarian Summit (WHS). Until the planned summit in May 2016, the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs with the WHS-secretariat facilitates a global process of consultations with all major stakeholders as well as with affected people on major topics and on recommendations and expectations towards outcomes of the WHS and a future humanitarian agenda. DKKV is actively participating in one out of four global Thematic Teams, the one focusing on Reducing Vulnerability and Managing Risk”. Overall, the consultation process focusses on the following emerging issues:

• Ensuring affected people, particularly women, have a stronger voice and influence over humanitarian action;
• Confronting international humanitarian law (IHL) violations and finding new ways to protect and assist people in conflict;
• Developing new approaches for managing recurrent and protracted crises;
• Global action to address the funding gap;
• Adapting the humanitarian system to new contexts, actors and challenges;
• Localising preparedness and response; and
• Creating an enabling environment and investment in innovation to better deal with current and future humanitarian challenges.

In addition, a further set of four cross-cutting issues are being discussed separately:
• Gender equality in humanitarian action;
• Urban risk and response;
• The role of the private sector; and
• Understanding risk.

This first World Humanitarian Summit shall raise the needed awareness and support for these pending humanitarian problems/demands. One important element for this is disaster risk management together with increasing peoples and communities’ resilience as well as building up and enhancing local and national actors’ roles and capacities for preparedness and response. Studies repeatedly show that investments in preparedness and risk management have positive benefit to cost ratios and thus may reduce the demand for relief funding and activities in case of new disasters and crises.
Results of this work are of relevance both for the international humanitarian support by German actors as well as for preparedness and DRM strategies within Germany. Thus DKKV will continue to actively include its network partners within the ongoing workstreams and dissemination of results.

The project achieves the elaboration of an analysis and contextualisation of the cooperation and coordination possibilities between the National Platform and national actors.
The concept pursues the following three sub-goals:
Subgoal 1: Scientific analysis of the existing structures and working methods of national actors, including the national cluster approach and the National Platform in the field of Preparedness and Prevention.

Sub-goal 2: Scientific contextualisation of ways to improve cooperation between national actors, with particular reference to the national cluster system and the National Platform.

Sub-goal 3: To present a comprehensive scientific study on the possibilities of cooperation between national actors, including the national cluster system and the National Platform, with special attention to the transferability of the results of the study, including best practices.

The project aims to develop a scientific study that takes particular account of local and national conditions in order to develop options for action that meet the expectations of the national project partners. Nevertheless, it will also be important that the transferability of the results to other countries will be possible. This will require adjustments for the respective country, which can only be worked out by the national actors. This will ensure the "ownership" approach.

One of the tasks of the National Platforms is to support the coordination and involvement of all relevant actors in the field of disaster risk management. They were established in the course of the signing of the "Hyogo Framework for Action" (HFA) in 2005 in order to bring together the various actors for the cross-cutting task of disaster risk management and to continuously improve disaster risk management measures. The survey of 50 national platforms carried out by DKKV on behalf of the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) recommends better involvement of actors and the provision of services to them. (see Key Recommendations, pages V and VI). Furthermore, the role or mandate of the National Platforms does not always seem clear. In many cases, they have insufficient financial resources. Furthermore, a concrete legal basis for the work of the National Platforms is often lacking. Therefore, many National Platforms face the challenge of adapting their tasks, financial resources and legal basis to the requirements in order to fulfil their mandate.

Therefore, the overall objective of the project is to improve the cooperation between National Platforms and national actors in the field of disaster risk management with a special focus on national clusters. For this purpose the implementation of.

Subgoal 1: Exchange between the National Platform, national actors and clusters in the field of disaster risk management about their objectives, structures, working methods and mutual expectations.

Subgoal 2: To develop measures to improve the coordination and cooperation of National Platforms with national actors with special attention to national clusters.

Subgoal 3: To develop and communicate the strategy for improved coordination and cooperation to the National Platform.

The Hyogo Framework for Action is the action programme of the international community for the period 2005 - 2015 to reduce the loss of human life, social, economic and environmental goods and values caused by natural events. With the adoption of the HFA at the 2005 World Conference for Disaster Reduction (WCDR) in Japan, the member states of the United Nations recognized the need for regular reporting on progress in its implementation and made a voluntary commitment (HFA, IV/ B/§ 30). In January 2005, the German government designated DKKV as the German focal point for reporting on progress in implementing the HFA. The UNISDR Secretariat is responsible for the transnational coordination of reporting. The results of the HFA reporting flow into the Secretary General's report to the General Assembly. In addition, they provide the ISDR Secretariat with an important information basis for regional analyses and syntheses on disaster risk reduction. The reports are core documents of the ISDR system and disaster preparedness in the United Nations system. The reports make it possible to identify remaining gaps and necessary resources, to evaluate lessons learned and, where appropriate, to exchange information between States and organizations.

The preparation of the "National progress report on the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action (2013-2015)" was financed by the Federal Foreign Office - Humanitarian Aid Unit.

MATRIX - a collaborative research project, coordinated by the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) - aimed to develop multi-type hazard and risk assessment and mitigation tools for Europe to tackle multiple natural hazards within a common framework. This allows future analysts to optimize the risk assessment process, contributes to rationalising data management for hazards and vulnerability reduction, and supports cost-effective decisions considering a multi-hazard perspective. Multi-type hazards relate to hazard interactions like cascading effects and the rapid increase in vulnerability during successive hazards. Hazards like volcanoes, coastal and fluvial floods, landslides, wind storms and wildfires were considered.

Major task were to:
1. develop new methodologies for multi-type hazard and risk assessment, with a focus on a) risk comparability, b) cascading hazards and c) time-dependent vulnerability within the framework of conjoint or successive hazardous events.
2. compare this new multi-hazard and multi-risk analytical framework with the state-of-the-art in probabilistic single-risk analysis.
3. establish an IT framework for test cases analysis following a multi-risk approach, considering both real-world test cases or by exercises involving an idealised synthetic (or virtual) test example.
4. disseminate the results to the relevant communities, end users and stakeholders, in particular National Platforms for Disaster Risk Reduction, and to incorporate their views into the development of multi-risk assessment methodologies and tools.
The various tools and methods were assessed in three test study areas: Naples, Guadeloupe and Cologne

DKKV was mainly involved in the MATRIX dissemination activities as described in point 4.

The fundamental task of the project "Return on Experience for Enhanced Integrated Prevention" was to evaluate if the original design criteria and qualitative disaster risk reduction measures currently in place are adequate enough to offer appropriate protection with regard to extraordinary events. It estimated the extent to which collated knowledge of previous disasters was implemented after those events and how effective these actions were. In this context the topics of climatic and societal changes were included as part of the investigations.

The overall objective of the project was to contribute to the development of knowledge-based disaster-prevention policies.

Central to the project were:
- Tackling the critical issue of whether the existing technical frames and qualitative preventative measures are sufficient in dealing with extraordinary natural events.

- An assessment of how effectively, and to what degree, prior knowledge has been implemented, with the aim of improving civil protection.

- An evaluation of the extent to which design criteria and experience drawn from previous events have been adapted and integrated into existing prevention strategies or led to the readjustment of preventative arrangements.

- A consideration of the adaptation of the frameworks and prevention quality in view of societal changes (e.g. urbanization or demographic change), and the projected weather-induced extreme events caused by climate change.

The project was based on the analysis of 15 case studies from Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland and France, and within this framework an analysis of 28 so-called ‘hotspots’ took place.

The project linkER was implemented in the framework of the Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) program led by the European Union. It supported the implementation of the operational use of the GMES Emergency Response Service (ERS). The main objectives of the ERS is to support and improve the European Emergency Response in case of natural and man-made disasters and humanitarian crisis by providing high quality space based earth observation products and tools for different phases of disaster management to the users. The users comprise of national focal points (e.g. national Civil Protection Authorities) and EC focal points like DG ECHO, which have direct access to the ERS products.
DKKV was in charge of collecting user requirements on the technical implementation of the interfaces, the analysis of the integration feasibility of ERS products into given workflows, the validation of implemented interfaces, the evaluation of workflow through user feedbacks and the user workshops.
DKKV covered processes related to eight national focal points in the following countries: Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia and Sweden.
Today GMES ERS is known as Copernicus EMS. For further information on Copernicus Emergency Management Service please visit: http://copernicus.eu/main/emergency-management