Urbano Fra Paleo
Associate researcher
Urbano Fra Paleo is an expert in disaster risk governance. In particular, he studies the institutional framework and solutions adopted for risk reduction through public policies, as well as the mode of hazard governance adopted by different societies to manage the hazards they have prioritised.
Urbano is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT (CGIAR), and a member of the European Science & Technology Advisory Group of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). He is also co-chair of the Task Force on Measuring Hazardous Events and Disasters of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE).
He has been Professor at the University of Extremadura, Professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Visiting Professor at the United Nations-mandated University for Peace (Costa Rica), and Research Associate at The Environment Institute, University of Denver (USA). He has also been a Fellow of the American Geographical Society.
He has conducted research stays at, among others, the United States Geological Survey, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the European Parliament, the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) of Kyoto University (Japan), the University of Colima (Mexico) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA).
He is a member of Sigma Xi The Scientific Research Society, and Academia Europaea (The European Academy).
Among other works, he has published Building Safer Communities. Risk Governance, Spatial Planning and responses to natural hazards (IOS Press, 2009), Natural hazards in Galicia (Consorcio de Compensación de Seguros, 2010), and Risk Governance, The Articulation of Hazard, Politics and Ecology (Springer, 2015). He has recently published Family Farms and the Conservation of Agrobiodiversity in Cuba Food Security and Nature (Routledge, 2023) together with Leonor Castiñeiras.
Urbano Fra has contributed to the development of the Hazard Information Profiles (HIPs) catalogue, carried out under the leadership of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction and the International Science Council, and the Hazard definition and classification review framework.