MaREI and the School of Law at UCC have been awarded a grant by the EPA for a project called “Enhancing Integration of Disaster Risk and Climate Change Adaptation into Irish Emergency Planning”. The project objectives are to explore how climate change will affect short- and medium-term change to vulnerable communities and sectors in Ireland and how this affects the emergency/incident types identified in the Strategic Emergency Management (SEM) National Structures and Framework. The project will be supported by the Irish Red Cross and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

The project will look at exploring synergies between Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Disaster Risk Management (DRM) with Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) (and sustainable development) to provide opportunities to better approach the longer term planned response (i.e. CCA planning) in combination with how Ireland responds in the short term to extreme weather (i.e. emergency management).

The outcomes from the project will be designed to provide guidance for better coordination and coherence for emergency planning in Ireland and how these are maintained and enhanced for planning for resilience of Ireland’s communities in both the short- and long-term. They will identify synergies between Disaster Risk Reduction and Disaster Risk Management with Climate Change Adaptation and provide guidance for both the assessment for climate induced enhanced vulnerability to change (using the Climate Ireland platform also hosted by MaREI) and how this can be incorporated into the implementation of Strategic Emergency Management national structures and Framework in Ireland.

Early in the New year of 2020, we will be advertising for a post-doctoral position to support the work with colleagues in MaREI and the School of Law so watch out for job advertisements on UCC and further information for anyone interested in this position can be provided by martin.letissier@ucc