The 2017 laureate of the RISK Award is the "EpiNurse" project, which seeks to equip nurses in Nepal with monitoring and surveillance tools to prevent and control infectious diseases after disasters.
Short for “Epidemiology Nurse”, the project will train health workers in earthquake-prone urban areas to act as health security monitors. Information collected through the monitoring process will feed a database to further develop models for supporting risk-management decisions in disaster situations and to reduce future risks.
Issued every two years by the Munich Re Foundation, the UN office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the Global Risk Forum Davos, the RISK Award honours innovative plans and approaches to reducing risk and enhancing disaster management, with a 100,000-euro prize enabling the entrants to move from the drawing board to the real thing.
The 2017 edition’s theme was “Innovative concepts and technologies for information and communication”, with the entrants presenting digital projects to help communities better anticipate disasters.
The seven-member RISK Award jury is made up of experts in disaster risk reduction from a range of backgrounds: Mr. Walter Ammann, the Founder and President of Global Risk Forum Davos; Dr. Susan Cutter, Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina; Ms. Anisya Thomas Fritz, co-founder of Fritz Institute; Mr. Robert Glasser, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction; Mr. Thomas Loster, Chairman of the Munich Re Foundation; Ms. Maria Emily Lubega Mutagamba, Minister of Tourism of Uganda; Professor Haresh Shah, a pioneer in the fields of risk analysis, earthquake engineering, and probabilistic methods for over 35 years; and Ms. Sandra Wu, Chairperson and CEO of Kokusai Kogyo Co., Ltd.
Click here to find out more about the 2017 shortlist and for background on the RISK Award: https://www.unisdr.org/archive/51946
