Dear Giuseppe Forino we all know very well that mitigation of disaster risk is highly dependent on capacity building of people, communities, countries and/or regions at risk. I am not sure what factors your hypothesis taking into consideration. But let me share with you an amazing fact. Just in last year, in 2018 session about 500 plus full funded MS, PhD scholarships were awarded by China Scholarships Council under the project New Silk Road to project countries. And all these were mostly focusing on Disaster Risk Reduction domain. If you google "New Silk Road Scholarships CSC" you will came to know about each university.

Dearl Junaid Ahmad , thank you for your response.

I am not referring to any specific driver (of exposure, vulnerability, and adaptive capacity) as I would like to screen from peers what do they know/think.

Interesting and important there are scholarships from Chinese government focusing on DRR, I also note that applicants should "be in a good health", who knows what does it mean.

Dear Giuseppe Forino "be in a good health" mean that any student who get selection will need to submit medical certificate. It is a kind of formality like, no hard screening but I know (being Admin of scholarship group, helping students) Chinese government just look for two main diseases Hepatitis and Tuberculosis. And If someone have any or both of these two, the chances are in 99% cases they don't get visa.

I think that the question is too general as the new silk road idea has too many aspects to it.

Agree, but the question was general on purpose. I was trying to collect perspectives from different people. A little bit unsuccessful by the way, but there are papers mentioning environmental issues and risks related to the project

I agree that some papers mention environmental issues and I also feel ´that this important initiative requires a broad discussion, involving experts who have worked on various aspects of the New Silk Road. Maybe some still can be motivated to provide deeper insights.