Action 4: Mitigation / Adaptation and Disaster Reduction

Present activities & status

During the last 20 years, the INRaSTES conducts systematic research on the Risk and Safety Analysis of Complex Systems. The focus was originally on potentially hazardous industrial plants, with research ranging from the mapping of potential accidental scenarios, through the assessment of their occurrence frequency, to the definition of emergency response plans and specific mitigation measures that could alleviate the consequences of the potential accidents. The risk analysis methodologies are presently enhanced with the scope to address critical situations stemming from natural hazards, which can largely interfere with technological systems and cause a very critical mixture of natural and human-made risks. INRaSTES has developed over the recent years methodological approaches for conducting strategic risk analysis on heterogenous interconnected critical infrastructures, such as transportation systems. The developed approach contains inherently weather related risks and natural hazards, since these are considered as priority threats in several regions of Europe owing to the frequent occurrence. Recently, there is on-going research on preventive measures like the planning of land use around potentially hazardous installations or the risk-informed sitting of new installations, in order to help most competent authorities in their difficult administrative task.

The generated weather forecasts with very high spatial resolution, have been extended to estimate risk indices for weather related hazards (e.g. heat waves, fire weather indices, flood index, extreme winds) individually as well as an aggregated index for holistic risk. Furthermore, the weather forecasts are been used as inputs to impact assessment models for natural hazards (e.g. fire spreading models, regional flooding tools). In many cases innovative schemes have been applied that couple weather modelling and fire spreading account for radiative impacts on the atmosphere.

The economic dimension is not overlooked by the conducted research of INRaSTES. Presently, members of the Institute have participated in the development of environmental-energy-economic models (E3M) based on the Input-Output Analysis firstly proposed by Wassily Leontief (Economides et al 2008). The developed framework has the ability to capture interdependencies between various producing sectors of the economy on a National and Regional level. It has been employed in studies concerning the optimization of the National/Regional GDP subject to constraints in the emissions of climate gases and aerosols and energy usage (Hristu et al 2010).

The R&D capacity of INRaSTES is already at a high quality level, possessing necessary tools, knowledge and experience to make an important contribution to climate change mitigation, adaptation and disaster reduction. The experience with analyses under uncertainty allows for better assessment of the current climate data variability, to propose preventive policies to address climate related risks in the future.

 

Research Vision and Associated Actions in EnTeC

The research vision of INRaSTES aims towards improved risk assessment of the broad range of impacts owing to climate change at the international, national and local levels. Future research plans focus on building stronger bridges between the assessment of the immediate risks of climate variability and the effects of long-term climate change, in the context of other relevant trends, such as socioeconomic development and urbanization. This includes improved estimation of the contribution of both meteorological hazards and climate change, with greater attention to previously neglected mechanisms, such as the diverse effects of population displacement or the degradation of water supplies and other ecosystem services. Use of disaggregated data to identify and describe the health risks to particularly vulnerable population groups (e.g. those exposed to multiple hazards), may also be considered. In the context of this R&D priority, the critical issues are the policies and research directed at helping societies to adapt to the effects of current and future climate change and variability, through quantifying and reducing physical and social vulnerability to extreme events.

Climatic change is accused for the observed increases in the frequency and intensity of “extreme” natural phenomena, such as floods, hurricanes, tsunamis etc., which cause severe adverse effects on both the people and the environment. Recent reports show significant expected impact from climate change on transportation systems, especially on maritime and land transport. INRaSTES aims to extend existing risk analysis approaches to capture the impacts on climate change on sensitive sectors of the national economy. The work performed by INRaSTES attempts to provide a scientific background for the effective integration of disaster risk considerations into sustainable development policies, planning and programming at all levels, with a special emphasis on disaster prevention, mitigation, preparedness and vulnerability reduction. To this end existing collaborations (signed MoU) with the Centre for Security Studies, the think tank of the Ministry of Citizen Protection, will be used.

The foreseen downscaling of GCM on a high resolution regional level using advancing numerical weather models (Action 3) to acquire predictions of future climatic parameters will be subsequently used (a) to derive future multi-hazard risk indices and (b) fed as input to impact assessment models to examine the impact of future climatic conditions on major incidents of the present days. Both analyses are directed towards the identification and quantification of the potential differences of present to future years under different scenarios.

The area of E3M will continue to be a major field in recent years, with multiple different areas to be covered. The development and analysis of regional Environmental Input Output Matrices (EIOM) will provide valuable insights into the structure of the regional economy and its relations to greenhouse gases and aerosols. The translation of future IPPC scenarios into input national and regional EIOM and the application of the E3M will provide information on the future shaping of the Greek production patterns, whereas on a second level the optimal economy-environmental mix may be translated into emission scenarios to be fed into GCM / RCM models (Activity 3).

The provision of scientific data on the impact of climatic change on important entities around Greece, of not important size to conduct independent research or limited resources to gain access to, will be a key issue of envisaged activities in the future years. These mainly include small Greek island municipalities, the economic activity, sustainability and even existence of which crucially depends on future climatic conditions.