Identification of Informative Content Needs supporting Rapid Risk Assessment of Acute Public Health Events (ICN-RRA)

Risk Assessment is considered a key part of the risk management cycle and can be defined as a mental process aiming to establish a level of risk for a population in relation to a specific event, with the purpose of identifying potential response or mitigation actions. The process is usually expressed in terms of probability of occurrence of an event and of consequences for the involved individuals, and is used in several scientific disciplines. In public health, Risk Assessment implies an evaluation of a risk in terms of health for a human population exposed, or potentially exposed, to a threat. In case of outbreaks and other acute public health events, the process is commonly defined within the scientific community as a “Rapid Risk Assessment of Acute Public Health Events” (RRA) and aims to achieve a particularly prompt identification of action able to rapidly limit the spread of the event and the health consequences for the population. The Disaster Risk Management Knowledge Centre (DRMKC) is an initiative of the European Commission launched in 2015 to enhance resilience to disasters at EU level. The activities of the DRMKC support the translation of complex scientific data and analyses into usable information and provide science-based advice for decision making purposes, as well as timely and reliable scientific-based analyses for emergency preparedness and coordinated response activities. The overall scope of the DRMKC is to bring together existing initiatives in which science and innovative practices contribute to the management of natural disaster risks. Among other objectives, the DRMKC is required to support EU member states in improving their capacities to reduce risk across multiple hazards and sectors, including global health threats. For this reason, in terms of acute public health events, the DRMKC is currently trying to identify the information useful to support the RRA related to biological hazards (epidemics). The ultimate aim is to create a web-based informative repository openly consultable by member state authorities and other health professionals both in the EU and further afield. This platform aims to includes validated multidisciplinary information and an exhaustive list of additional credible informative online sources able to support RRA activities.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

The U.S. household furniture industry: Adapting to changing times.

The U.S. wood household furniture industry has adapted to change in many ways in recent years. The industry has grown steadily since the 1982 recession, and has been shifting to the U.S . South and Southeast. Although California has also become prominent in furniture production, many recent factors indicate geographic shifts away from the state, particularly in wood furniture production. The household furniture industry has also adapted and continues to adapt to factors which have increased the globalization of trade in all products. Foreign competition has resulted in mergers and consolidation in the U.S. household furniture industry, and has also forced production to become more oriented toward non ready-to-assemble and upholstered furniture

Mapping of risk web-platforms and risk data: collection of good practices

A successful DRR results from the combination of top-down, strategies, with bottom-up, methodological approaches. The top–down approach refers more to administrative directives, organizations, and operational skills linked with the management of the risk and reflects more the policy component. The bottom-up approach is linked to the analyse of the causal factors of disasters, including exposure to hazards, vulnerability, coping capacity, and reflects more the practice component. In the context of disaster science, policy and practice are often disconnected. This is evident in the dominant top-down DRM strategies utilizing global actions on one hand and the context specific nature of the bottom-up approach based on local action and knowledge. A way to bridge the gap between practice and policy is to develop a spatial data infrastructure of the type of GIS web-platforms based on risk mapping. It is a way of linking data information and decision support system (DSS) on a common ground that becomes a “battlefield of knowledge and actions”. This report presents the results of an overview of the risk web-platforms and related risk data used in risk assessment at the level of EU-28. It allows the discovery of the current advancement for risk web infrastructures and capabilities in order to establish a pool of good practices and detection of needs. The outcome of the overview shows the needs in risk web platform developments and tries to recommend capacities that should be prioritized in order to strengthen the link between risk data information and decision support system (DSS). The assessment is based on web search and outcome of diverse disaster risk workshops and conference.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

INFORM GLOBAL RISK INDEX RESULTS 2018

Welcome to the report of the INFORM Global Risk Index for 2018.The INFORM Risk Index is a way to understand and measure the risk of humanitarian crises and disasters, and how the conditions that lead to them affect sustainable development. INFORM partners and other organisations continue to use INFORM products to support their prioritisation and decision-making relating to crisis and disaster prevention, preparedness and response. This is the fourth annual report of INFORM and has a special focus on how composite indices, such as INFORM, might be used to support and monitor the implementation of new development frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Identifying challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction: Risk Data Hub for Disaster Risk Management

The Workshop on “Identifying challenges in Disaster Risk Reduction” held in Varese, Italy on 28 -29 of June 2017 aimed to improve the knowledge base on Disaster Risk Assessment (DRA) that could contribute to the potential development of the updated version of EU Guidelines for Risk Assessment and Mapping for Disaster Management. The DRMKC Risk Data Hub will become the tool for centralized collection of available knowledge, which will facilitate the identification of gaps. Challenges common to a large number of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) initiatives were identified and discussed. Challenging at local, national and international levels for top down strategies and bottom up actions for DRR is to underline the scope, importance and applicability of different methodologies, data usage and actions for different scales. With this workshop, the DRMKC planned to identify main challenges for DRR focusing the attention on two hazards: floods and drought. To accomplish its objectives, the workshop brought together: experts of flood and drought disaster risk, member states experts with experience in disaster risk assessment at national level and national Web platform developers experienced in disaster risk mapping.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

The Mississippi furniture industry and its use of wood-based materials

Furniture manufacturing is one of the most important industries in Mississippi; the industry\u27s phenomenal growth and current high levels of production and employment have recently been widely recognized and publicized. The Mississippi Economic Council (1988), for example, recently labeled the state The New Furniture Capital of America;\u27 and Northeast Mississippi was recently described as a booming region\u27\u27 that wants to be the Furniture Capital of America\u27\u27 (Evans 1987). The present report characterizes important aspects of Mississippi\u27s furniture industry, including its development and relative importance within the state and within the U.S., and assesses current information on the availability and use of wood-based raw materials. The report has major sections on The Mississippi Furniture Industry and Use of Wood-Based Materials, with a Discussion section summarizing the current outlook for furniture production and demand

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Life cycle assessment of waste water treatment plants in Ireland

The European Water Act 91/271/EEC introduced a series of measures for the purpose of protecting the environment from the adverse effects of effluent discharge from Waste Water Treatment Plants (WWTP). There are environmental costs associated with attaining the required level of water quality set out in the act such as, emissions from energy production, ecotoxicity from sludge application to land. The goal of this study is to assess these costs. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been the analytical tool used to evaluate the environmental loadings. The CML 2001 Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) methodology has been adopted and implemented using GaBi 6.0 LCA software. Two plants of varying size and location were chosen for the study. The study found that energy consumption and sludge application to land are the largest contributors to the environmental impact associated with waste water treatment

INFORM scientific and technical improvements in 2017: Missing values imputation and IT developments

The JRC is the technical and scientific leader of the INFORM model, and responsible for methodological improvements, and their implementation. This publication describe the INFORM methodological and technical improvements implemented by JRC in the 2017. On despite the indicators have been selected on be base of their reliability, consistency continuity and completeness, most of the them don’t cover all the countries for all the year. This results in a significant number of missing values, irregularly distributed among countries, time and indicators. This report describes an innovative approach for predicting missing values using advanced statistical technics. We also present the IT developments in support to the INFORM model, including the web platform for managing the INFORM Subnational models and the improvements in the API.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen