Suitability model: Risk-Informed decisions for planning and investment

Sustainable and resilient development requires risk-informed planning for a country’s optimal decision making. Discussions at COP25 in Madrid last month (12/2019) confirmed this need for better risk-informed decision making. However, standard methods for risk models commonly depict only risk categories for different hazards in pre-defined areas of land. They neither provide information about expected damages and losses, nor are the hazards weighed based on relevance for different development options (e.g. residential or agricultural). Traditional attempts to incorporate risk data into decision-making processes required users to be well-trained in the analysis of hazard and risk maps which took up a considerable amount of time and learning effort on behalf of the stakeholders on the ground. The Global Initiative on Disaster Risk Management (GIDRM) supported the development of the Suitability Model to provide easy-to-understand and ready-to-process land planning and investment directions. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Coopreation and Development (BMZ) and implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ).