“Tomorrow’s risk is being built today. We must therefore move away from risk assessments that show risk at a single point in the present—which can quickly become outdated—and move instead towards risk assessments that can guide decision makers towards a resilient future,” observed Francis Ghesquiere, World Bank Head, Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery in a recently released report on managing future disaster risk.
The World Bank Group report, “The Making of a Riskier Future: How Our Decisions are Shaping Future Risk”, recommended the optimisation of current risk assessment strategies to account for the dynamic nature of global disasters in shaping policy measures.
Specifically, the report noted the crucial role of risk assessment in formulating policies that will create communities that are resilient against catastrophes. It explained the need for disaster risk assessment to understand risk in terms of expected population affected or losses incurred.
The dynamic nature of hazard can be captured in disaster risk assessment through the implementation of climate change scenarios in global and regional climate models.
