Avoiding Disasters

When it comes to extreme hazard events, the overwhelming focus is on catastrophe and destruction. Yet the goal of disaster risk management is precisely to ensure that society continues to function – and even thrive – despite shocks arising from natural or human actions; in short, to ensure that “nothing happens” in the face of extreme events. This challenge creates a dilemma for recognizing and incentivizing important investments to reduce risk since these investments go unnoticed precisely because they are successful. Yet the innumerable successful risk reduction interventions implemented in communities worldwide represent a critical data-set from which learnings may be drawn, to assist disaster risk management professionals and communities in replicating, adapting, and scaling similar disaster-prevention activities where they are further needed. This is only possible if these successes are identified, analyzed, and celebrated. In the session, we present the “Averted Disaster Award” (ADA), created to recognise, highlight and celebrate disaster risk reduction initiatives around the world that are often invisible by the very nature of their success.

 

 

 

We also highlight the development and use of probabilistic counterfactual analysis to identify and quantify successful risk reduction interventions, and how this has led to the creation of the Averted Disaster Award. Launched in 2022, the Averted Disaster Award received nominations from around the world, and highlighted amazing narratives of lives saved and avoided loss in the face of earthquakes, hurricanes, wildfires and more. We are excited to announce the winners of the 2022 Averted Disaster Award, and share a video feature of the winning nomination.

 

And that’s not all! We’re also happy to announce the opening of the 2023 Averted Disaster Award nomination period, and invite you all to nominate projects that are having significant risk reduction impacts, often not recognized, for communities.