Towards enhanced coordination of disaster risk management and governance through a holistic framework for multi-level interaction and communication

The midterm review of the Sendai Framework highlights persistent challenges in disaster risk reduction (DRR), particularly the lack of coordination between disaster risk agencies, sectoral ministries, stakeholders, and policies, hindering coordinated planning and effective decision-making. Recent disasters, such as the 2024 Spain Valencia flood and the 2020 Gjerdrum quick clay landslide in Norway, reveal governance weaknesses, inadequate risk management, and communication barriers, intensifying disaster impacts. These events demonstrate the need for integrated, multi-sectoral coordination, decentralisation, and better risk-informed decision-making. A positive example is Greece's wildfire risk management system, which integrates science and technology for improved governance in DRR. However, gaps in local- and regional-level implementation persist. The TOGETHER project aims to address these challenges, focusing on multi-level and cross-sectoral coordination to build a disaster-resilient society amidst climate change and multi-hazard risks. The final outcome of this project is a toolkit that embodies three innovations: (1) Five interoperability frameworks (legal, organisational, technical, semantic, and cross-domain) to provide FAIR data, (2) a multi-tool system (MTS)- an intelligent AI agent to generate insights using the FAIR data for Disaster Risk Management Governance (DRMG), and (3) DRMG that comprises innovative solutions and existing systems and best practices to enhance multi-level and cross-sectoral interactions within the existing governance systems and protocols for more efficient disaster management coordination. The tool will implement a novel public-private-civic partnership (PPCP) approach in three Disaster Risk Management Innovation Hubs ( Norway, Greece, Spain) to co-create, co-evaluate, and demonstrate the functionalities. Two replication studies in Portugal and Türkiye will showcase the robustness of the toolkit for DRM.