In the first week of July the European Society for Environmental History (ESEH) had invited to its 8th Biennial Conference to Versailles. Under the motto “Greening history: Studying the environment across disciplines: past, present, future” environmental historians from around the world met to exchange their empirical findings for a sustainable future and to discuss further applied research trends amongst the humanities.

This report shows the results from the implementation of the MCA in eight RISC-KIT cases that highlights several key lessons for future DRR projects with regards to a) the importance of sufficient preparation for participatory sessions; b) stakeholder interaction and inclusion in the DRR projects; c) the way research results are presented to non-research communities; d) and the challenges of implementing single-approaches to diverse contexts.

This report summarizes the potential prevention, mitigation, and preparedness measures for each of the eleven case studies included in RISC-KIT (Resilience – Increasing Strategies for Coasts – ToolKit). It includes a discussion with case study owners about potential measures as well as the identification and presentation of the measures according to what Disaster Risk Management (DRM) phase and dimension of disaster they address. Furthermore the report takes the nature of the measure into consideration.

The objective of this report was to establish a starting position for potential advances in DRR strategies through review, data collection and historical analysis. In particular, the report reviewed (supra-)national DRR management plans for all CSs and analysed large-scale historical events to derive lessons-learned at RISC-KIT European CSs in the United Kingdom, Portugal, Italy, and France. Large-scale events like tropical cyclones and hurricanes were also analysed for Bangladesh and the USA. An interdisciplinary approach drawing on the physical, economic, social and historical sciences was used to ensure that all aspects relevant to the project were considered.

As part of the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2015, Dr. Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute chaired the session, "Safeguarding our Shores: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Coastal Climate Change Adaptation in Europe and the United States." During the session, which took place at the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference (ECCA), the origins and meanings of flood protection programs, adaptation measures and strategies in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany and the US were discussed. Dr. Nico Stelljes provided a presentation about local adaptation strategies. The presentation is available for download.

As part of the European Climate Change Adaptation Conference 2015, Dr. Grit Martinez of Ecologic Institute chaired the session, "Safeguarding our Shores: Social and Cultural Dimensions of Coastal Climate Change Adaptation in Europe and the United States." During the session, the origins and meanings of flood protection programs, adaptation measures and strategies in the Netherlands, the UK, Germany and the US were discussed. The presentations are available for download.

Van Dongeren, A., Ciavola, P., Viavattene, C., De Kleermaeker, S., Martinez, G., Ferreira, O., Costa C., R. McCall, 2014. RISC-KIT: Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts–toolkit. In: Green, A.N. and Cooper, J.A.G. (eds.), Proceedings 13th International Coastal Symposium (Durban, South Africa), Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 70, pp. 366–371, ISSN 0749-0208.

The European Union is in a unique position to support and coordinate Member State efforts to develop Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies, as well as support collaboration on the development and sharing of knowledge, standards and cost-effective tools. This finding and other key messages are presented in a new policy brief for EU policy makers, prepared as part of the EU FP7 Collaborative project RISC-KIT (Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts-Toolkit) and in collaboration with PEARL (Preparing for Extreme and Rare events in coastaL regions). The policy brief is available for download.

Climate change is leading to increased vulnerability of coastal areas as coastal storms, sea level rise and flooding cause significant impacts across Europe. Resilience-Increasing Strategies for Coasts – toolKIT (RISC-KIT) is a four-year European research project aimed at delivering ready-to-use methods, tools and management approaches to reduce risk from coastal storms and increase the resilience of Europe’s coastal zones. Designed around 11 case study sites, 10 European and one international, the project takes an interdisciplinary approach combining physical, socio-economic, socio-cultural and social-ecological data to design site specific Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) strategies and draw implications for national and European policy.