CRED -

The Centre  undertakes research and qprovides an evidence base on the burden of disease and health issues arising from disasters to improve preparedness and responses to humanitarian emergencies.

CRED trains students, relief personnel and health professionals in the management of short-and long-term humanitarian emergencies.

Goals

• To promote research and provide information to the international community that ensures sufficient preparedness and improved responses to disasters and populations in danger.
• To train field managers, relief officers, doctors and health professionals in the management of short and long-term disaster situations.
• To introduce emergency preparedness and response in development programmes of disaster-prone countries.
• To develop autonomy of developing countries to improve their own preparedness for and response capacities for emergencies and critical situation

Objectives and methods

The increased numbers of emergency situations throughout the world and the growing involvement of the international community in response to such human tragedies has influenced the CRED's activities over the years. The scope of the Centre is defined by those emergency situations with a major human impact. This includes all types of sudden, natural disasters (such as cyclone, flood or earthquake), long-term disasters (such as famine or civil war) and situations creating a mass displacement of people (such refugees, returnees or expelled).

Although the main focus of the Centre is on safeguards, public health and the sanitary aspects of disasters, CRED also studies the socio-economic and long-term effects of these large-scale disasters. Increasingly, preparedness, principally at the level of human resource development as well as problems linked to the management of crises have gained a higher profile within CRED's activities.

The Centre is unique in a field where most agencies concentrate their efforts on direct action and envisage only rarely operational and policy research, the evaluation of aid or structural preparedness. Long-term management, through improved local and international preparedness, is recognised increasingly as an indispensable element of emergency aid programmes. This is also the case in the consideration of disasters during major development projects, as well as the environmental and socio-economic results of natural disasters. The goals of CRED are to address these gaps in both international and national contexts.