Cataloguing Extreme Weather, Water and Climate Events Opening sesssion CBS TECO Geneva, Switzerland 26 March 2018

WMO Congress 17 Resolution will improve monitoring the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction Systematic characterization and cataloguing of extreme weather and climate events in a form that allows data on losses and damage to be cross-referenced to the phenomena

Background Resolution 9 (Cg-17) focuses on role and mandate of NMHS. While NMHS can, and in many cases do, archive hazard information, generally it is not the mandate of NMHS to maintain official national account of losses and damages Mandate for maintaining loss and damage information lies (normally) with other agencies (such as disaster risk management agency or national office of statistics). Development of database with hazard events and impacts requires partnership between mandated agency to record loss and damage information and NMHS

Background

Linked and compounded hazards Linked hazards Are risks that have separate impacts that are connected to the same event. Linked risks could be cascading risks (one risk causes another risk to be more likely which in turn causes another one to be more likely and so on). Linked risks could also happen when one risk increases the likelihood of multiple unconnected risks occurring. Example: rain results in flood, results in landslides leading to transport disruption Compounded hazards These are events that happen at roughly the same time (or in close succession of each other) with impacts that combine to increase the overall impact (either by causing greater impacts directly or by affecting the system’s capacity to respond to all the impacts). Example: wind and snow, lead to blizzards and acceration, leading to power cuts

Warnings reflect potential impacts Event Id # Event area to be extended as system progresses toward the east.

Layering of Information Enables New Possibilities for Analysis and Application Loss & Damage Climate Warnings

Estimating and cataloguing loss & damage Example from EM-DAT, the OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database

International Workshop IPTT – CWWCE Resolution 9 (Cg-17) Decides to standardize weather, water, climate, space weather and other related environmental hazard and risk information and develop identifiers for cataloguing weather, water and climate extreme events; Requests the Executive Council to provide oversight on the standardization of hazard information for loss and damage assessment; Requests the Commission for Basic Systems to develop, in collaboration with all technical commissions and regional associations, a proposal on standardized identifiers for cataloguing hazardous events for consideration by the Executive Council; Requests the Secretary-General to take the necessary actions, within the available budgetary resources, to facilitate the work on this important issue.

Event Record

Cascading Event Records Event UUID: random string of 36 characters 114bd279-dde4-48c9-b20d-db1c967bfa4c 3fdaa43c-51d0-414f-a26a-e23de203aa76 Regional (e.g. Europe) Heavy Rain Flooding Global (ad hoc analysis) National (e.g. Germany) Heavy rain Flooding Strong gale f3df3f02-7574-4ffe-beea-021af820bc47 0882b06f-ed9a-40d2-9f96-df0da7130ee9 3b3a30ec-03f3-445d-8f86-76cb5447e9ee

The Approach Centres on identifying events uniquely, while at the same time being able to group together events which are hydro-meteorologically related. Involves assigning a universally unique identifier (UUID) number to each event including key attributes of the event into a data record. Other attributes are to be included that provide context such as description, local identifier (e.g. local or regional names of storms), and links to other events which would enable clustering of events (e.g. events linked to other events) to mirror larger scale (synoptic) phenomena.

“If we implement this solution we will have done a great service for humankind” Julio Serje UNISDR

Thank you Merci