News

he Southwest Indian Ocean Risk Assessment and Financing Initiative (SWIO RAFI) will be launched  during the fifth  Regional Platform for Risk Transfer Mechanisms (April 28-30), hosted by the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC).

In the span of one year, volunteer mappers put 30,000 buildings on the map in Sri Lanka, enabling the country to plan ahead and be prepared for the next disaster. 

The destruction wreaked by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines this month has renewed debate on a critical financial question: How can nations best prepare for and respond to natural disasters?

The Tonga Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai volcanic eruption, tsunami and ashfall has caused an estimated US$90.4M (TOP 208 million) in damages – the equivalent of approximately 18.5% of Tonga’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – a World Bank assessment for the Government of Tonga has found. The report was produced with funding from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).

At last September’s U.N. Conference on Small Island Developing States, the World Bank announced that it would help small, disaster-prone countries to improve their adaptive capacity to climate change through the Small Island States Resilience Initiative.

The World Bank has published a new report warning that the world is “ill-prepared” for an increase in climate change-spawned disasters, rising populations, and increasing vulnerability.

A global initiative is gaining momentum to improve multi-hazard early warning systems and so boost the resilience of the most vulnerable countries to extreme weather and the impacts of climate change.

Later this month, participants from all five Central Asian countries will discuss issues of natural disasters at the Forum on Financial Protection against Natural Disasters in Almaty.

Global flood risk models were developed to identify risk hotspots in a world with increasing flood occurrence. GFDRR's Alanna Simpson co-authors an assessment of the ability and limitations of the current models and suggest what is needed moving forward.

A “paradigm shift” is needed in how disaster risk assessments are done, according to GFDRR. For too long, disaster risks have been considered according to static measures of vulnerability, creating an incomplete picture of future challenges.