Hazard Risk Mitigation & Emergency Preparedness Project

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The overall objective of the Hazard Risk Mitigation and Emergency Preparedness Project is to assist the Government in reducing the environmental, social, and economic vulnerability to natural disasters, and catastrophic mining accidental spills of pollutants, by strengthening the institutional and technical capacity for disaster management and emergency response, through upgrading communication and information systems; implementing specific risk reduction investments for floods, landslides and earthquakes; improving the safety of selected water-retention dams; and, improving, on a pilot basis, the management and safety of tailings dams, and waste dump facilities. Through its components the project will: 1) strengthen and enhance the capacity of Romanian authorities to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural or man-made disasters, through modernization of information technology and communications systems, public awareness and preparedness, and technical feasibility work, and institutional framework for launching of the Romanian Catastrophe Insurance Program; 2) reduce the seismic vulnerability of priority technical and social infrastructure, through the retrofitting of key structures, and institutional strengthening; 3) reduce flood risk and vulnerability in critical areas in Romania, to improve safety of large and small dams, in order for these to function as designed, and, to map and model the risk of landslides, so as to reduce losses, providing better land use planning tools; 4) reduce the risk of water and soil contamination, and loss of human and aquatic life from catastrophic mining accidental spills of pollutants. The global environmental objective is to demonstrate, and provide replication for the reduction of catastrophic accidental spills of trans-boundary pollution loads, from mine operations flowing into the Danube and Black Sea basins. Finally, Project management unit costs will be financed, to be established in the respective ministries responsible for each related component.