As part of the partnership with the Association of Municipalities of the Middle Itajaí Valley (Ammvi), Brazil, Paulo Moura, project development engineer at IMREDD, presented the stages in the risk management process to an audience of mayors, deputy mayors, municipal councillors and technicians. Valentin Grosso, a research engineer at IMREDD, led a workshop on building a regional risk management action plan.

Information, prevention, protection and crisis management. These topics were presented at the 1st regional seminar on resilience and risk management, held on Tuesday (10) at the Association of Municipalities of the Itajaí Mid-Valley, in Blumenau. According to Moura, risk management should begin by understanding the phenomena and risks to which each municipality is subject, as well as informing and training citizens to deal with such events. Then we move on to the prevention phase, aimed at reducing the impact of the hazard on society and then to the protection of people and property. «Finally, we have crisis management, when phenomena are monitored to make aid more effective and to organise a return to normal as quickly as possible», explained Moura.

«We are in the process of opening the doors of the Itajaí mid-valley to the world, and we are working to become a benchmark for resilience. We have already been through some difficult times, and the natural disasters that have affected our municipalities encourage us to seek out innovations and tools that make us pioneers and guide our efforts to anticipate crises, act on vulnerabilities, serve the population and return to normality as quickly as possible», said the president of the association of municipalities and mayor of Blumenau, Mário Hildebrandt.

The seminar was organised by Ammvi in partnership with IMREDD, Université Côte d'Azur, the Regional University of Blumenau (Furb) and Blumenau town hall, with the support of the municipalities of the Itajaí Middle Valley. As a precautionary measure against the coronavirus epidemic, the IMREDD team participated by videoconference.