A secondment activity was organized in the city of Lian Batangas, the Philippines as a side event to the five-day workshop. The Mayor, Isagani Bolompo, members and officers from the Lian Batangas and CABARET members participated in the event marking more than 100 participants together. Mr Joselito Castro presented the current status of multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) in Batangas province. Dr Ruben Paul Borg and Dr Boyko Ranguelov, University of Malta, Malta and Mining and Geology University, Bulgaria respectively presented an overview of the current and emerging international standards on MHEWS. In addition, Dr Harkinti Rahayu, from the Institute of Technology Bandung, talked about the best practices of MHEWS for tsunami, earthquake and volcanic eruption and guidance on how to improve existing systems. Dr Edgardo Vallar and Dr Ignacio Aguirre Ayerbe, from the University of Malta, Malta and IHC, Spain were the facilitators of the secondment activity conducted at the Lian Batangas event.

Members from the University of Yangon conducted a study during May to August, 2019 to evaluate the coastal erosion related hazards in Daw Nyein area in Myanmar. This study aimed to propose a flood risk map of Daw Nyein area using remote sensing techniques coupled with field observations for strengthening community resilience to coastal hazards. The study area is located about 30 km SSW from the town of Pyapon, near the coastline of northern Andaman Sea and the Gulf of Mottama in the Pyapon Township, Ayeyarwaddy Region, Myanmar. Geospatial analysis and the DEM for simulation of flood risk mapping into various classes as the maximum five meters of height of water is considered for flood risk mapping. Using the evaluated flood risk map and DEM, the study made some suggestions and recommendations, such as the villages which should be evacuated as flooding increases, identifying the ideal evacuation points and routes for the peoples, and the vulnerability of the area based on an analysis using the Coastal Hazard Wheel (CHW) methodology.

“Resilience” is increasingly becoming a popular concept in the field of climate and disaster science, with researchers and practitioners from different fields defining it in slightly different and nuanced ways. Since, resilience is necessarily a characteristic that evolves over time, to measure and monitor resilience must therefore consider its dynamic aspect. In the context of community resilience, a system dynamics approach could help discern and diagnose structures that lead to degrading or enhancing the performance of city subsystems over time. An inter-regional collaboration was developed between the Riga Technical University (RTU) and the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU), for the purpose of joint research on the development of systems thinking approaches and quantitative dynamic methods for characterizing resilience, leading through a comparative study of Riga and Metro Manila.