Building Resilience Amongst Communities in Europe (EMBRACE)

In an interdisciplinary, socially inclusive and collaborative context, emBRACE aims to improve the framing of resilience in the context of disasters in Europe. It will develop a conceptual and methodological approach to clarify how the resilience capacity of a society confronted with natural hazards and disasters can be characterized, defined and measured. On the basis of a systematic evaluation of the widest literature base, the project will first elaborate an initial conceptual framework. Disaster footprints and a review of current data gaps and challenges for human impacts and development databases in providing resilience data on regional and national levels will help inform indicator development. These will then be tested and ground truthed by means of 6 well-chosen case studies across Europe exposed to different natural hazards, situated in different governance settings and socio-demographic-economic contexts. Resilience will be contextualised through the application and evaluation of newly developed indicators and models, and will contribute to reformulation and adaption of the conceptual framework. emBRACE will considerably advance the methodologies for evaluating, modeling and assessing resilience of different actors. emBRACE will be methodologically rich, drawing on partner expertise across the research methods spectrum. It will apply these methods across scales from local to European. Stakeholders and experts will be incorporated into knowledge-sharing groups. There will be ongoing engagement with these stakeholders alongside programmed consultations during the development of the framework and model, case study work, and the reshaping of concepts, guidelines and database requirements for disasters and societal resilience. A key difference in emBRACE is the seeking out of people and groups not normally included in such fora; not as subjects of research but as partners in research and experts in their own right.EU, Funded under :FP7-ENV-201