National Disaster Risk Reduction Workshop - Improving risk knowledge through the implementation of national disaster loss databases

Hazard assessment and risk information are inadequate in many countries in Africa mainly due to the lack of capacity that results in a failure to inform decision-making processes. Risk information, as an output of effective monitoring, dissemination and analysis, is key to addressing disasters and disaster risks in the continent. This is not only considered to be important in terms of forming the basis for early warning systems and contingency planning, but also informing investment and development decisions.

The development of national disaster loss databases represents a low-cost, high impact strategy to systematically account for disaster losses. As such, this is the crucial first step to generate the information necessary for risk estimation and to inform public investment in Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). As a second step, the physical losses recorded in the databases are translated into monetary/economic losses enabling an initial evidence-based estimate of recurrent losses.

Four out of seven targets (a to d) of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015 - 2030 point to the reduction of human, physical and economic disaster damages and losses as a crucial requirement for the achievement the Framework. This raises the importance of having disaster loss accounting systems. Accounting losses is an essential step for monitoring the progress against the Sendai Framework. Moreover, having a disaster loss accounting system equally helps countries and communities to build resilience based on reliable, nationally-sustained information that helps to take future risk-informed decisions for preventing and reducing disaster risk.

UNISDR with funding from the ACP-EU "Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities Programme" is working to:

• Develop national and institutional capacities for managing disaster risk information systems.
• Train participants in the concept, methodology and use of the National Loss Accounting System using the DesInventar methodology.
• Train national institutions in the implementation of the national database.
• Promote synergies between the institutions for data collection and sharing.
• Train participants for collecting and registering information in a methodical and rigorous way.
• Strengthen the capacities for developing temporal, spatial and event analysis based on the DesInventar methodology.