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The Lincoln Institute for Rural and Coastal Health (LIRCH) together with our colleagues at the University of Loughborough invite you to attend the Inaugural meeting of the Multi-Hazards-to-Health Outcomes Working Group. This event is led by Dr Harriet Elizabeth Moore (LIRCH) and UNESCO Chair in Informatics and Multi-Hazard Risk Reduction Professor Qiuhua Liang (University of Loughborough).

The PÕ¾ÊÓƵ is delighted to co-host this exciting opportunity to come together with ‘multi-hazard-to-health’ enthusiasts from across multiple academic institutions, public and private organisations and agencies, charities, and community groups. We know that single events like heatwaves impact the health and wellbeing of societies. However, single events often precipitate further events (e.g., groundwater flooding, air pollution events) that have a cumulative impact on physical and mental health. Mapping transitions from multi-hazards-to-health outcomes is an important step in preparing our societies for future climate change scenarios.

Currently, there is excellent work being done to prepare the UK and elsewhere for the uncertain future of climate change and the impact that singular and compound multi-hazards associated with meteorological and hydrological processes are likely to have on the health of societies. There are lots of unknowns; some unknowns pertain to the nature of multi-hazards and the transition from meteorological events to successive environmental hazards. Other unknowns relate to health outcomes.

Where along the vast continuum of multi-hazard ‘chains’ do health outcomes emerge?

How can health services prepare for these unknowns?

What big questions need answering and how can meteorological, environmental and health organisations and institutes work together with our communities across our diverse landscapes to answer big questions?

This event will take place on 5th February, 2025 in hybrid form allowing our colleagues from around the UK and elsewhere to join the conversation. The in-person event will be held at the PÕ¾ÊÓƵ. The day will involve three sessions, two which will be delivered in hybrid form.

The first session involves invited presentations. The remainder of the day is dedicated to curiosity and innovation!

We invite our attendees to participate in a competition to pioneer novel approaches to multi-hazard preparedness, response and evaluation: The Waffle House Challenge. Read about the challenge below and 

 

The Waffle House Challenge

In the early 2000s the US Federal Emergency Management Agency realised the need for a simple rapid response index to communicate to government about the severity of a hazard event like a storm. The Waffle House Index is a traffic light system indicating the degree of operation of waffle shops in southern USA during storms.

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.

Waffle shops across the southern states have adopted business strategies to keep the shops open during storms, and local communities widely recognise that shop closure means they need to evacuate. This is such a good method because waffle houses are everywhere, capturing rural remote as well as urban areas. Due to their locations, closure reflects not only electricity disruption, but also wider supply chain breakdown, including FEDX, transport, and operations for food delivery. The Waffle House Index is a rapid metric for communicating disaster severity immediately, supporting real time evaluation and response among the many parties involved in mitigating the impact of disasters on communities and infrastructure. Genius.

The Waffle House Challenge invites teams to present an index for the UK/England with an equivalent purpose: communicate the degree of a disaster rapidly between emergency services, government, and local communities. At a minimum, the index should be a traffic light system.

Index’s should relate to *at least one* natural hazard and associated health outcomes. A panel of ‘multi-hazard-to-health’ experts will vote for the top three. The winning solutions will be carried forward through a multi-institutional research project investigating the wider utility of the index within organisations and communities involved in the event.

Colleagues attending in person will have a couple of hours on the day to work on their solution while those attending online can join in the final session to present their solutions in ‘elevator pitch’ format. Solutions need to include: a traffic light or similar index and a mapped multi-hazard chain that the index captures to generate a UK metric similar to the waffle house index. 

Check out these articles on the Waffle house Index:

 

 

Sponsor this event!

We invite the ‘multi-hazard-to-health’ community to sponsor this event by supporting our colleagues to attend the event in person. If you or your institute are funding your in-person attendance let us know (registration below) so that we can promote your institution.

 

If you have any questions about this event, please contact hamoore@lincoln.ac.uk.