I am happy to report that we have received approval from Zurich and the Z Zurich Foundation to move the Flood Resilience Alliance into the next stage. While more detail will follow as we come closer to the kick-off of our programs in summer 2018, we can disclose the following: The successes and lessons learnt in the phase 1 tell us that we are on the right track, but more can and needs to be done to build community flood resilience. Following our approach of long-term and flexible funding to focus on problem analysis and innovative solutions to build community flood resilience, the next phase will be another multi-year commitment that we are very excited about. It will give us the opportunity to dive into the topic even more deeply. We are looking forward to working with participating NGOs, including the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Mercy Corps, Plan International and Practical Action as well as research partners International Institute for Applied Systems and Analysis (IIASA), the London School of Economics, the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-International (ISET), and ETH Zurich
The resilience measurement framework, a key component of phase 1, will be enhanced and remain a centerpiece of our work, indicating how communities progress in the main dimensions and sources of resilience over time. I believe it is also a critical proof point that NGOs find it attractive to work in this type of alliance – Alliance 2.0, as we call it, will consist of more partner organizations and will help us replicate and scale even faster. With this, we will get closer to our “North Star”, or main ambition, of attracting much more investment into ex-ante prevention actions and resilience building.
Until the operational kick off next summer, we have reserved time to thoroughly prepare and plan the next steps ahead. This includes a detailed analysis of all the achievements of phase 1 to ensure we find the best leverage points but also learn where we can still improve. Once this analysis is available we will share on this and other channels to explain how we define and measure success, and how this helps us inform Alliance 2.0. I am extremely proud of this important milestone and of all the fantastic contributions by all our partner organizations – the full team really.
You can read more on ISET’s collaboration with the Zurich Insurance Group on flood resilience in these publications:
The PERC Manual Learning From Disasters to Build Resilience: A Simple Guide to Conducting a Post Event Review
Prioritizing Recovery Spending: Lessons from the 2017 Peru Floods/Estableciendo prioridades para las inversiones de reconstrucción: Documento breve de Política
A Post-Event Review of the October 2015 Floods in South Carolina: A Deep Dive into the Columbia and Charleston Areas
Urgent case for recovery: what we can learn from the August 2014 Karnali River floods in Nepal
Blog originally posted my Michael Szoenyi at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/zurich-flood-resilience-alliance-goes-next-phase-michael-szoenyi?articleId=6359076406324002816#comments-6359076406324002816&trk=prof-post