PARATUS

The ongoing pandemic and climate crisis have taught us hard lessons about the systemic impact of compounding disasters. Stakeholders in disaster risk management are faced with the challenge to adapt their risk reduction policies and emergency plans but lack the tools to account for the cross-sectoral impacts and dynamic nature of the risks involved. The PARATUS project aims to fill this gap by developing an open-source platform for dynamic risk assessment that allows to analyse and evaluate multi-hazard impact chains, risk reduction measures, and disaster response scenarios in the light of systemic vulnerabilities and uncertainties. These services will be co-created within a unique transdisciplinary consortium of research organisations, NGOs, SMEs, first and second responders, and local and regional authorities. To gain a deeper understanding of multi-hazard impact chains, PARATUS will first conduct forensic analysis on historical disaster events, augment historical disaster databases with hazard interactions and sectorial impacts, and exploit remote sensing data with artificial intelligence methods. Building on these insights, PARATUS will then develop new exposure and vulnerability analysis methods that enable systemic risk assessment across sectors (e.g. humanitarian, transportation, communication) and geographic settings (e.g. islands, mountains, megacities). These methods will be used to analyse risk changes across space and time and to develop new scenarios and risk mitigation options together with stakeholders, using innovative serious games and social simulations.

PARATUS is funded by the EC within the Horizon Europe Programme under call CL3‐2021‐DRS‐01-03 and will run from 2022 to 2026.

EURAC is a core partner of the consortium and leader of WP1.

Contact person: silvia.cocuccioni@eurac.edu