DI Promote the cooperation of national and international agencies towards a multi-hazard approach to address more effectively and systematically coastal risks. Promote at the ministerial level:- legislation for a multi-agency approach to addressing risks of various hazards -organizational structures and incentives that would enable multi-disciplinary, multi-organization approach to address risks relevant to coastal zone. - the need for consolidating and sharing the knowledge of processes in the coastal zones among all agencies involved in addressing risk. In collaboration with key agencies, working at the international level on issues related to observing, forecasting and warnings to identify major gaps in the technical aspects from observations to modelling and forecasting across disciplines/hazards that pose risk to the coastal areas and to facilitate the development of a multi-hazards framework where technical capacities, resources and infrastructure can be best utilized to address risks in the coastal zones. Promote the development of multi-purpose platforms of observations of multi- hazards and the need for multi-hazard regional warning centers in support of national early warning capacities

Current Status World Meteorological Organization (WMO) convened a multi-disciplinary Symposium on “Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems for Integrated Disaster Risk Management.” This Symposium was held on May 2006,co-sponsored by WMO, The World Bank, OCHA, IFRC, UNDP, UNESCO and ISDR with participation by 99 experts from the national, regional and international networks of 18 international and regional agencies. The participants represented wide range of expertise such as policy, development and financing, scientific and technical, humanitarian, educational and capacity-building, community-based planning related to the different aspects of early warning systems. The main goals of this multi-disciplinary multi-agency experts' meeting were: i) To provide recommendations for an integrated approach to warning systems for enhanced disaster risk reduction, building on and linking existing capacities of different stakeholders; ii) To explore further the concept of multi-hazard approach to early warning systems, related potential economies and synergies that may result from such approach, and provide recommendations on additional studies and/or demonstrations that may be required to fully assess all aspects of such approach; iii) To develop recommendations and prioritization for actions to address gaps and needs related to governance, organizational and operational aspects of early warning systems for enhanced disaster risk reduction. Workshop results at

Current Status (2) In June 2006 in Ecuador a Latin-American meeting on Climate Change and Natural Disasters was held. This meeting was organized by the Spanish Ministry of Environment and coordinated by the National Institute of Meteorology of Spain. They participated representatives of the Iberoamerican networks on Climate Change, Meteorology and Defense/Civil Protection agencies, and also representatives of relevant international organizations in this matter, like are WMO, ISDR and GEO, among others. There were around 90 participants, with delegates of all Latin-American countries. The main topics of the meeting were to discuss about the activities, capacities and needs of the three areas of activity in the framework of the natural disasters and also to explore the ways to increase the cooperation among them. The meeting dealt with the effects of the natural disasters in general, but it was clear that in many parts of Latin America one of the more threatened places are the coastal areas, due to the increase on the intensity and frequency of the adverse natural phenomena, like, for example, the last 2005 Hurricane Season. There have been several conclusions of the meeting, but one of the most important has been the proposal to develop a collaboration project among Climate Change, Meteorology and Defense/Civil Protection communities, to be raised to the next Latin- American Summit of Heads of State.

Plans for WP To better focus the Task to support the ISDR in the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action. It will include a pilot project for a risk management system for Geohazards in the SE Asian Region involving existing organizations and projects such as ASEAN, APEC, Sentinel Asia and Communities of Practice active in the area.