The Office of Disaster Management held a Stakeholder Engagement event this Wednesday, October 19, 2022 at the Fort Young Hotel Waterfall Conference Room in Roseau. This event is being held as part of the ‘Connecting Communities for Climate and Disaster Risk Preparedness (CCC-DRIP) Initiative: a Research Based Approach in Dominica Project.’

The CCC-DRIP Initiative is being led by The University of the West Indies (UWI), through the Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) in Dominica with funding by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) of Canada, and with counterpart funding by The University of the West Indies. 

The Office of Disaster Management (ODM) is the local implementing partner of the project here in Dominica.

The project’s general objective is to increase Dominica’s social and economic resilience to natural hazards including climate change by improving: data gathering, risk estimation and developing components of Early Warning Systems (EWS) that involve local stakeholders and public-private partnerships – while producing lessons for at-risk coastal communities. 

The project aims to collect, use and integrate a range of existing and new sources of data: physical, climatological, social and economic sources and will also identify data gaps. New technologies and advances in data management will also be used to develop multi-dimensional hazard and vulnerability mapping to prepare disaster risk management (DRM) programs and early warning systems.

To date, the project team has been visiting Dominica and has trained over 100 stakeholders in the use of appropriate software to assist with disaster risk management efforts. Seismic research has also been conducted, and communications equipment has been purchased to assist with early warning efforts.

 Furthermore, the project will be moving ahead with research in floods and landslides susceptibility.