Second World Congress on Natural Disaster Reduction

American Society Of Civil Engineers, Reston VA

Investigators

Abstract

This award represents partial funding for The World Congress on Disaster Reduction. This workshop establishes a process for forging a global network of researchers and practitioners who have the knowledge, experience, technical capacity, and credibility to work together with community stakeholders and policymakers to solve local, national and regional problems related to natural and environmental hazards. The two long-term goals of the process represented by the World Congress on Disaster Reduction are to improve sustainability and disaster technical assistance throughout the world. Members of the Alliance of 1,000 will work together to imporve the technical and political capacity at local, national and regional levels for improving sustanability of the built environment and advancing disaster technical assistance. The Alliance is a diverse group of international professionals committed to being part of a global network to solve a myriad ofresearch and practical problems related to natural and environmental hazards. As part of the process, the Alliance will create a set of thirty-three Global Blueprints for Change," authoritative documents containing guidance for focusing research on the indicators of physical, social, enterprise, and environmental vulnerability and directing professional practice toward practical solutions that are likely to reduce these sources of vulnerability. The "Global Blueprints for Change" will be disseminated at the Pre-Congress Summit Workshop to be convened at ASCE's World Headquarters in Reston, Virginia on August 19-22, 2001. A much larger meeting will take place on August 26-30, 2002 by in Washington, D.C. with approximately 1,000 of the nation's and world's experts on disaster reduction. The larger meeting, to be convened at the US Department of State, is the first of what is expected to become a series of recurring global forums convened at regular intervals, to focus the goals and objectives of researchers and practitioners on achieving a sustainable built environment in communities throughout the world and improving disaster technical assistance. Each meeting will seek to marshal and involve all scientific and technical disciplines, all public- and private-sectors, all communities, all nations, and all geographic regions in disaster reduction.