Held annually on October 13th, the International Day for disaster Risk Reduction was established by The United Nations General Assembly to promote a global culture of risk awareness and catastrophe reduction. Climate-related disasters are impacting people's well-being and livelihoods, which means that these disasters hinder sustainable development. A new report from the UK's Met Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research shows that by 2060, the world's average temperature could rise by 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit. This means individuals, cities, and businesses across every sector will be impacted by the more extreme weather events. With these, Public-Private Partnerships(PPPs) will become more crucial to building resilience and reducing the risk of future disasters.
THE COLLABORATIVE PROJECT
A GREAT example of a disaster risk reduction tool is the Critical Assessment Management System (CAMS), a data-driven application used in disaster preparation and response. Developed by the US and Canadian chapters of ARISE—an international student organization—and several public and private actors, CAMS helps communities become more disaster resilient. It was designed to function both online and offline in the event that power and connectivity are lost.
A GREAT SUCCESS CASE
The application stores all critical asset data as well as asset dependencies and helps fill the knowledge gap between identified critical assets and other relevant assets for disaster resilience, including risks faced by these assets and interconnections among the assets and compound consequences, which can lead to failure chains in case of a hazard. It also enables users to map the relationships between assets, identify failure chains based on the severity and type of catastrophe, create an inventory of critical assets and the associated data, and identify the hazards to which each asset is exposed. With this collaboration, CAMS is essential in enhancing municipal and statewide decision-making regarding investment and mitigation programs to protect and restore crucial properties.
FOSTERING PPPS FOR DISASTER PREVENTION
As demonstrated by the success case from CAMS, Public-Private Partnerships are essential. They aid in making disaster management or disaster risk reduction by enhancing the potential of businesses to employ their powerful capabilities to amend troubles in hot and needed spots. At the same time, it put the local area expertise and legislative capacity of the government to good work. The public sector can pinpoint the problems for businesses to look into while untangling bureaucratic roadblocks that make development harder.
Ultimately, disaster prevention should not become a blame game where the question asked is, "whose responsibility it is to solve" Disasters threaten sustainability, and building resilience is everyone's concern. PPPs are key: everyone must pull their weight to effectively and sustainably mend the problem.
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