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College of Arts and Sciences

International Centre of Excellence–VaRM

HVRI is home to the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk's International Center of Excellence on Vulnerability and Resilience Metrics (ICoE-VaRM), established to monitor disaster losses.

ICoE–VaRM

Established in August 2013 by ICSU, ISSC, and UNISDR, the International Center of Excellence on Vulnerability and Resilience Metrics (ICoE-VARM) is providing global leadership in empirically monitoring losses from disasters and in developing new approaches for measuring disaster vulnerability and resilience. 

The ICoE-VARM provides core scientific expertise in tools and approaches for measuring social vulnerability, disaster resilience, and loss and damage databases.  Specifically the Center of Excellence 1) expands and improves vulnerability and resilience metrics developed for the U.S. context to other regions working collaboratively with partners; 2) provides leadership in improving and harmonizing sub-national hazard event and loss databases; 3) builds capacity through training the next generation of disaster scientists including international students (pre- and post-doctoral) and scientists through short-term study visits; and 4) supports the existing research projects of IRDR related to disaster loss data and integrated assessments.

ICoE and IRDR projects are collaborative in nature and aim to provide global contributions towards achieving the IRDR legacy.  In particular, each established ICoE enables and supports regional scientific activities through geographically-focused contributions based on more localized inputs, and by being visible centers of research to movitate broader participation in the IRDR program.

Research and Outreach Activities


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