Paris, 26-28 October 2016

Background

Natural hazards and man-made threats have caused significant costs in OECD countries. Despite their substantial socio-economic impact, the evidence base on the exact costs of disasters remains fragmented and largely incomparable – even in the context of data-rich OECD and EU countries. While in many cases disaster cost data theoretically are collected, data often are collected by various actors and relies on different approaches and methods.

Data on the cost of disasters are crucial for enabling evidence-based investments in disaster risk reduction. When collected over multiple years, disaster loss data can help uncover the effectiveness of investments and highlight where changes in risk management policy are necessary to mitigate the negative impacts of disasters.

International frameworks, such as the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, have equally recognised the value of comparable disaster loss data and are giving additional momentum to existing data collection efforts.

 
The Joint Expert Meeting on Disaster Loss Data was organized by the OECD Public Governance and Territorial Development Directorate in corporation with the European Commission, the Joint Research Centre, as well as with the EU Platform for Climate Adaptation and Risk reduction (PLACARD) Project. This meeting follows the first expert meeting on “Improving the Evidence Base on the Costs of Disasters” organized on 21 November 2014.

Objectives‌‌

This event aimed to further existing efforts for improving disaster loss data collection in EU member and non-EU OECD countries and to facilitate the exchange on the progress already made.

Against the backdrop of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Expert Working Group (OIEWG) on Indicators and Terminology for Disaster Risk Reduction for the Sendai Framework concluding in November 2016, the joint expert meeting also was a platform for informing the final global negotiations. With a forward looking perspective, the meeting included discussions on data needs for the Paris Agreement and ex-ante economic loss modelling approaches, and their reliance on ex post loss data collection.

The objectives of the meeting were to:

• Facilitate an evidence-based assessment of the proposed Sendai Indicators and inform the final global negotiations, 
• Provide insights into the bottlenecks and success factors in collecting loss data and establishing national data repositories,
• Facilitate exchange on how countries can overcome existing challenges of economic loss accounting, and 
• Promote good practices in using ex-ante disaster loss evaluations for policy design and implementation.

Presentations

Agenda

Issues paper

Contact

For more information please contact Catherine Gamper (catherine.gamper@oecd.org)