Blogs

There remain challenges and barriers to entry for women in mapping and tech, many of which are cultural. However, a panel at the first State of the Map Africa conference provided some practical solutions to tackling some of the challenges.

Between 2005 and 2014, due to natural disasters, the Central America region had a nominal cumulative loss of around US$5.8 billion, and witnessed more than 3,410 deaths and hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

Development professionals often complain about the absence of good-quality data in disaster-prone areas. Technological progress, however, is quickly creating new ways for governments and development agencies to overcome data scarcity.

If governments could apply triage to substandard housing, medical triage would be a much less frequent occurrence – because in the developing world, it is mainly housing that kills people, not disasters. Resilient cities require resilient housing. 

Part 2 of a 3-part series on Bangladesh's progress in Coastal Resilience.

Protecting the poor against natural hazards is a moral, economic, and social imperative. The poor can lose everything to disaster, and not just money.

For many countries, damages and losses related to transport are a significant proportion of the economic impacts of disasters. Recognizing this, GFDRR and the World Bank organized an international knowledge exchange that shared concepts and practices on resilient transport, including systems planning, engineering and design, asset management, and contingency programming.

Usually the first questions after a disaster are “How many people are affected?” and “What’s the damage?” We want to know how many people were affected and the potential impact on the economy.

A severe drought in Somalia risks pushing communities throughout country into famine. Ede Ijjasz-Vasquez and Ayaz Parvez discuss how the World Bank and its partners are working to help.