European and mediterranean workshop, climate change impact on water-related and marine risks

The main aim of the Workshop is to foster better preparedness and response amongst populations living in the European and Mediterranean areas which might be affected by water related disasters induced by climate change. This can be done by spreading the latest knowledge on the potential impact of climate change and identifying the challenges of the associated scenarios to such
domains as public awareness, protective actions, emergency planning, early warning procedures and emergency response. The workshop will be structured around the following major issues:

1. Reassessing risk identification: how the traditional risk evaluation can be merged with the diverse climate change scenarios?
2. Adapting preventive measures: how the often short term designed measures will be able to cope with longer term evolutions due to climate change?
3. Improving populations’ information: how to communicate on the specific natural hazards component of climate change?
4. Enhancing emergency plans and training: how to adapt the existing procedures to the new features imposed by climate change?
5. Fostering international co-operation: how to coordinate transboundary initiatives on both climate change issues and disaster risk reduction?

To enrich the discussion and identify concrete proposals, decision makers, civil society and mass media representatives, as well as experts, are invited to participate in the Workshop.

The main expected output of the Workshop is thus twofold:

- to identify new requirements for risk management responding to the recent context of increased threats related to climate change consequences.
- to promote, with the support of international organizations and central authority institutions, a network of actors to transform such new requirements into a better protection of the population against such emerging hazards.