Incorporating epidemics risk in the INFORM Global Risk Index

The objective of the presented study is to introduce epidemic risk in the multi-hazard risk assessment INFORM Global Risk Index (GRI) tool. The INFORM GRI is a composite indicator developed by the Joint Research Centre of European Commission (JRC) that identifies countries at risk of humanitarian crisis and disaster. Although biological hazards are a significant source of risk that may result in emergency and disasters, epidemic risk was not yet included in the INFORM model. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR) indicates that biological hazards such as epidemics and pandemics need to be addressed in addition to natural hazards as a key area of focus for disaster risk management. Hence, there was an increasing demand to develop a comprehensive multidimensional risk assessment tool, which is globally applicable to all types of risks, including epidemics. INFORM GRI offered the perfect ground to integrate this additional aspect and to consolidate INFORM as a reference for global multi-hazard disaster risk assessment tool. Starting from an epidemic risk conceptual framework (Epidemic Risk Index - ERI) jointly developed by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the JRC, this report describes the process and the method to convert ERI into a quantitative model. The integration of the epidemic aspect into INFORM concept has allowed JRC to develop the new version taking as well into consideration another request largely discussed with INFORM partners, namely the possibility to have a more hazard-dependent overview of the risk index. Hence, two different developments have been done: 1. developing the INFORM Epidemic Global Risk Index (INFORM Epidemic GRI) as an adaptation of the INFORM GRI, preserving the integrity of the original model, by adding the hazard (epidemics) dependent components derived by the ERI conceptual framework; 2. enhancing the content of the INFORM GRI 2019 (Enhanced INFORM GRI 2019) by adding an epidemic hazard component together to the other hazards. For the first time, within a single framework, the INFORM Epidemic GRI allows to assess the risk for all the type of epidemics. On of the advantages of his modular approach is that it can be applied to different types of hazards, not necessarily included in the INFORM GRI, allowing comparability among different risks. Furthermore, with the inclusion of the epidemic exposure, the Enhanced INFORM Global Risk Index is the first comprehensive multidimensional disaster risk assessment tool, which is globally applicable to all types of risks.