The aim of this programme is to improve disaster risk assessment and forecasting, disaster risk monitoring and the integration of these into practical decision-making in low to middle income countries across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia.
Science for Humanitarian Emergencies and Resilience (SHEAR) is a new international research programme that focuses on four areas:
- disaster risk assessment (mapping and analyses)
- sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasting
- disaster risk monitoring
- the integration of these into practical decision-making.
The programme is targeting lower to middle income countries across sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia, focusing on the co-production of knowledge using a multidisciplinary and problem-centred approach.
NERC research will specifically address:
- hydrological controls on landslide risk as part of multi-hazard risk assessment
- real-time monitoring of risk, for example satellites and big data
- applications of weather and climate forecasting.
This overall aim will be to improve the characterisation of the hydrological controls on natural hazards thereby enabling better prediction of their occurrence and scale, with a focus on landslide risk.
The NERC component of the SHEAR programme’s research will be targeted around two main themes. Additional cross-cutting themes will enable a highly interconnected and multidisciplinary programme. The two main themes are:
- world-leading research into hydrological controls on landslide hazard as part of multi-hazard risk assessment
- flood and drought risk assessment and modelling in Africa as part of multi-hazard risk assessment.
The crosscutting themes will connect the landslide-focused research in theme 1 with research into new applications of flood and drought risk assessment modelling in Africa as part of multi-hazard risk assessment in theme 2. These are:
- real-time monitoring of risk (for example, satellites, big data, vulnerability indicators)
- applications of weather forecasting in risk assessment and preparedness.
The programme will link across existing strategic research programmes run by NERC and ESRC such as Increasing Resilience to Natural Hazards and Probability Uncertainty and Risk in the Environment.