London-based university seeking expertise in disaster management/building resilient societies/first responders, and big data to apply to the H2020 call on human factors, and social, societal, and organisational aspects for disaster-resilient societies

The university is developing a H2020 project titled societal resilience toolkit: The use of big data for building disaster resilient societies in Europe – learning lessons from Japan. As the impacts of climate change are observed globally through increased intensity and duration of hydro-metrological and climatological events, building the society and citizens resilience capacities to absorb, cope with and respond to disaster related shocks and stresses remains critical for achieving the 2015-2030 Sendai framework for disaster risk reduction global targets. With the evolution of big data trends and advances in technology around data sharing, data collection, predictive modelling and storage, social media and crowd-sourced data play a greater part in disaster emergency response and resilience. However, dependency on data infrastructure and overlooking the role of human capacity in Europe, may cause new societal vulnerabilities around issues of power, ethics and accountability. The collection and analysis of social data over the last decade has provided little guidance on how social and natural systems are likely to respond to the challenge of managing the risks of increasing shocks from climate change. Learning lessons from Japan's disaster management response to the ‘1995 Hanshin-Awaji earthquake which caused over six thousand deaths and property damage of about 110 billion U.S. dollars; and the 2011 East Japan earthquake along with the giant tsunami causing the accident of Fukushima Dai-ichi Nuclear Power Plant'2, the development of a resilience framework for action that can help guide the effective use of data for building community-driven resilience is essential to emphasise more informed policies for ethical resilience at the European local and national levels, and prioritize community-driven participation and indigenous knowledge, rather than solely emphasizing technology and infrastructure investments. The impact of this project will not only develop knowledge and capacity for European cities in resilience building, but also provide recommendations on climate change resilience governance, and how corporate data policies can better prioritise and serve local communities to increase risk awareness, and hence resilience among people and decision-makers in Europe. The following timeline will be followed: - deadline for EOI on 27 July 2019 - deadline for Call on 22 August 2019 - project duration 156 weeks The university is looking for partners with the following expertise: - disaster management - building resilient societies - first responders (such as firefighter department, police) - big data and social media management.