Many countries are now suffering after years of insufficient attention to warnings about the need for improved pandemic preparedness. The WHO has declared COVID-19 a pandemic, but its underlying factors, vulnerabilities and impacts go far beyond the health sector, and in Sri Lanka, it is overwhelming government and response agencies. This study will address two, inter-related challenges: How will countries cope if a major natural hazard occurs while the COVID-19 pandemic is ongoing? How can pandemic preparedness make use of the existing infrastructure for tackling other hazards? The project team will attempt to understand the potential impact of a pandemic-natural hazard hybrid scenario. It will also seek to improve early warning and preparedness for such an event, as well as the availability of and access to multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEW) and disaster risk information that include pandemic/biological hazards, which is also Target G of the SFDRR [1]. We will address these challenges by examining how public health actors be better included within a MHEW environment and how pandemic threats are integrated within national and local DRR strategies. We will explore the impact of COVID-19 on the response capabilities for other hazards, either multiple simultaneous events, or cascading impacts, and consider how COVID-19 and public health surveillance can be synergised with "the last mile" of MHEW. Pandemic is global, but the preparedness and response is local, and that response is very dependent on governance, laws, culture, risk perception and citizen behaviour. The study has been designed in close collaboration with Sri Lankan health and DRR agencies who identified the key gaps that need exploring. The team will develop and disseminate guidance to better incorporate pandemics and other biological hazards into national and local DRR preparedness and response

During the last decade, many initiatives have been undertaken to make progress in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and response. However the progress in disaster risk reduction has been limited by the failure to acknowledge and address the development processes as the root causes of disasters. Previous initiatives have concentrated on reducing existing risks, rather than on how risks are generated and accumulated in the first place through development projects that are taking place as a part of the reconstruction phase after a disaster or in response to the demand of urban sprawl. Furthermore, work on resilience has attracted criticism for its failure to involve vulnerable communities and address the issue of equity and power. As a result, the Sustainable Development Goals which call for "reduced inequalities", "inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities" and "partnerships for goals" and the Sendai Priority 4 that calls for build-back better in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction, are hard to achieve due to a lack of research knowledge, current practices and policies. One of the explanations for increasing risks is that the development and disaster risk reduction decision-making processes occur in silos, conducted by different agencies, institutions and other actors with differing priorities, perspectives and time horizons. Therefore, there is an urgent need to transform current development practices that increase or create risks, as well as unfairly distributing risks to vulnerable communities, to a new form of development practice that is equitable and resilient. This project consortium believe such a transformation can be achieved by enabling cross-organisational collaboration, openness, adaptability, learning, impartiality, power sharing and public participation. The project aims to investigate processes, governance structures, policies and technology that can enable a transition towards a more risk-sensitive and transformative urban development approach. More specifically, the project aims to investigate the nature of a sociotechnical system, enabled by a collaborative foresight and consensus building virtual workspace, which can promote collaborative governance approach across relevant organisations and support the transparent and democratic involvement of all the relevant stakeholders (including experts from local authorities, disaster management authorities, developers, poor and vulnerable communities, and humanitarian organisations) to analyse, forecast, visualize and debate disaster-risk trade-offs and to choose development plans that ensure sustainability and equitable resilience, giving considerations to climate change adaptation. The key research questions that the project is aiming to address are: What type of formal and informal collaborative partnerships need to be established to alleviate long-standing tensions between development and DRR and progress towards more risk-sensitive and transformative urban development? What changes are required within the current urban planning process to facilitate risk-sensitive urban development, giving consideration to natural disasters and their impact on the environment, economy and vulnerable communities? What are the type of narratives that need to be developed, presented and discussed to establish a comprehensive understanding of the impact of the proposed developments on the community, economy and environment ? What are the vulnerabilities that need to be considered within the local context? How can we make participatory planning more accessible to a range of communities? Three countries (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Malaysia) from the Asia-Pacific region have been selected for this research since the Asia-Pacific region continues to be the world's most disaster prone region. These countries are frequently affected by a multitude of natural hazards including floods, landslides, cyclones and droughts.

Coastal communities in the north and east of Sri Lanka (SL) face significantly greater risk of coastal flooding from storm surges associated with seasonal cyclones than those in the rest of the country. These storm surges are essentially local elevations in sea level caused by the weather system which subsequently inundate the land. Storm surges are caused by a combination of: (1) low atmospheric pressure 'lifting' the sea surface (barometric tide) (2) frictional drag of the wind blowing over the sea causing a slope in the water surface (wind stress) and (3) breaking waves transferring their momentum into the water column (wave setup). Hazard maps, to indicate predicted storm surge inundations around the Sri Lankan coastline, were produced by Prof Wijetunge in association with the Disaster Management Centre. The computer models on which these hazard maps were based, were limited to describing only the barometric tide and the wind stress. Subsequent advancements in understanding mean that wave setup can now be included. It is critical to do so, because the wave setup effect may contribute 40% of the surge in some locations i.e. some communities may face a more grave risk than hitherto realised. The situation is potentially much worse than this however, as scientists are beginning to understand the interaction of storm surges with severe rainfall events which almost always accompany the cyclones in the Indian Ocean region. The mechanism for this so-called compound flooding is that rivers swollen from heavy rainfall are prevented from effectively discharging to the sea due to storm surges coming inland. To protect against flooding events in the west we are familiar with flood defence structures; Sri Lanka has no such hard-engineered structures. However, they do have natural protective features such as mangrove forests and salt marshes. The potential benefits of mangroves in particular have received some attention since the devastating Boxing Day tsunami of 2004, though the intentional implementation in formal coastal schemes is still in its infancy. Prof Taylor recently received funding from the Global Challenge Research Fund to investigate how design codes might incorporate their effects. Against this backdrop, the C-FLOOD project will produce a new generation of compound flood hazard maps, based upon state-of-the-art computer modelling that will consider all the storm surge components and the rainfall effect. It will also consider a variety of climate change scenarios which will influence flooding due to predicted rising sea levels. This will be done by Prof Wijetunge at the University of Peradeniya in SL, and Dr Jayaratne at the University of East London, with their related expertise. Furthermore, the protective effects of the natural vegetation will be included in the modelling and maps, by conducting experiments at the University of Plymouth's COAST Laboratory. This will be undertaken by Dr Raby (Plymouth) and Prof. Taylor (University of Western Australia). The C-FLOOD project will focus on three communities that are deemed most vulnerable due to their geography and levels of poverty (associated with the past military conflict). The project team will work with community members in addition to local and regional leaders/administrators to maximise the benefits and uptake of the new hazard maps. Individual localised hazards will also be captured in comprehensive multi-hazard maps for the communities. Dr Kitagawa from the University of East London and Mr Ranawaka of the Coast Conservation & Coastal Resource Management Department have past experience of such activities and will be overseeing these critical aspects. The final outcome will be improved predictions of flooding inundation, with engagement of the selected communities, leading to improved resilience to compound flooding. The hazard map production techniques and flood impact mitigation methods could then be implemented across other vulnerable communities.