Blogs

Teams from the World Bank and GFDRR have embarked on a 40-day, 10,000-km journey along the entire Indian coastline. In this video, Ede Ijjasz and Saurabh Dani take you on the road with them to showcase some of the work the teams are doing to protect India's costal states against natural hazards.

The Vienna City Hall (Rathaus) is one of the landmarks of the Austrian Capital. Where in the 18th century these halls hosted the Viennese bourgeoisie, in January these halls now received disaster risk management professionals, decision makers, policy makers, technical institutions, and representatives from the private sector, NGOs and Austrian academic institutions to discuss disaster risk management issues in the country.

Measuring the impact of war on Syria is an ongoing challenge as the conflict continuesto devastate the lives of people and their communities. However, efforts to understand the nature and extent of the damage are essential for identifying immediate needs, and for preparing reconstruction plans that can be launched at the first sign of peace.

After Cyclone Hudhud, the one story that seemed to resonate consistently was the efficiency in clearing roads blocked by fallen trees and debris to make sure connectivity was restored at the earliest. We decided to dig deeper to find out what had been done differently here.

Since October 29th, 2015, Central Asia has experienced fifteen earthquakes of moment magnitude 5.0 or greater, which on average amounts to an earthquake every 6 days.

Climate risk management requires data and knowledge. The digital revolution has changed the daily lives of billions of people. But what about the billions who have been left out of this technological revolution?

Building on the idea of dividends of resilience, people working in disaster risk management are increasingly looking beyond avoided losses to the benefits gained even if disaster doesn’t strike for many years. 

The latest cyclical warming of Pacific Ocean waters, first observed centuries ago and formally tracked since 1950, began earlier this year and already has been felt across Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Despite its thousand-year history, the devastation associated with El Niño is not inevitable. Progress made by many other countries since the last major event, in 1997-98, shows that we can get a grip on its effect – and others caused by climate trends.

Local and international scientists agree that we can expect to have a major earthquake in the region. We don’t know exactly when it will strike, but we know it is closer than we think.