Name: Polish city urged to evacuate as floods batter central Europe | BBC News
Uploaded: 2024-09-19T14:04:06.000Z
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Well, there's also flooding in Central Europe.

The Czech Republic, Romania, Austria, and Poland have over 5,000 troops deployed to support people there.

The mayor of Nyssa in southern Poland called on 40,000 residents to evacuate to higher ground.

Heavy downpours have caused a lot of damage across the huge area where Storm Boris, bringing vast amounts of rain and snow over the weekend, has hit.

There have been a lot of dramatic rescues.

This was the moment that one person was banks flooding the area.

And Polish police shared this footage on social media of one of their helicopters involved in a rescue, winching residents to safety.

The rescues, the response, the clear-up, the preparations for more flooding continue.

The storms are now also reaching Italy, where warnings for heavy rain, strong winds, and floods have been issued for much of the country.Well, I'm joined by Dr. Jean-Luc Pescaroli, Associate Professor in Disaster Resilience at University College London.

Thank you for joining us.What do you attribute to the damage that we're seeing here in Europe and indeed across Myanmar?

Obviously, climate change behind it, but could more be done to protect people?Yeah, absolutely.

So, we see that there are different dimensions in how these events unfold.

One is the dimension of hazard, the other one is the dimension of vulnerability.So, in terms of hazard, we are seeing compared to before, a different level or a different pattern of recombination.

And we see that to some extent in both events.We see, for example, that the low probability high impact determinants that, for example, there were in the flooding in Europe, certain particular weather conditions, or the interdependencies between what is happening in Myanmar, like flood causing mudslides, are becoming the norm, are becoming something we need to consider on the hazard dimension.So, the way the climate is impacting the hazard is recombining them together.

So, what we perceive as low probability is becoming something different.

It's like giving us a new recombination, something that we need to consider in the planning process.On the other dimension, we see between these events in a completely different context, that there are some common vulnerabilities, or what we call in some of my projects, like Agile or is a multi-hazard, this common point of failure on which we need to prepare.So, this common vulnerability includes the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, that when it's disrupted, affects the recovery efforts and affects everything in society from the capacity later on of enterprises and the private sector to recover, and the capacity of dealing with effective evacuation and effective delivery.Sorry to interrupt.

We're looking, obviously, at established places where people live and where people work.

So, what should governments and communities be doing now changing weather patterns that we're seeing all over the world?Thank you for this question.

We were used to think of this as medium term.

So, we need to proceed in different ways, and some of that are actually starting to be activated.One, we need to understand how to integrate better technology within an organization.

So, not just the technical part, but how to have procedures over which follows action. For example, we have a warning how this is going to be part of business continuity and organizational resilience.

For example, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction is going to release soon some universal KPIs to support the private sector on this.Other elements that we need to consider is new tools that start from the very basic exercise, like tabletop exercise done by.

So, consider also the role of creativity in foreseeing the events that are going to come.Okay.

Well, obviously, it is a very urgent problem.

We are seeing it, as I said, in so many different parts of the world in different forms.

 But for now, Dr. Jean-Luc Pescaroli, thank you very much.Thanks to you for your time.Around the world and across the UK, this is The World Today on BBC News.