UNDRR News

Three weeks after the devastating tsunami in the Indian Ocean, the World Conference on Disaster Reduction opened this morning here to address the critical need of better preparing communities when faced by natural hazards.

Just ten years ago, on 17 January 1995, the city of Kobe was struck by a huge earthquake that killed 6,433 people and injured more than 40,000 people in 20 seconds. The earthquake was a traumatic experience for Japan and its people who realized too late

Jose Rubiera is the director of the Centro Nacional de pronosticos del Instituto de Meteorologia de Cuba and the weather forecaster for the main Cuban TV channel. UNISDR asked him a few questions about the importance of communication in disaster reduction, a topic that will be discussed at the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in Kobe next January.

Almost three weeks following the deadly tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people and affected several million in the Indian Ocean region, the ISDR secretariat notes 10 preliminary lessons learned from the disaster.

It could have been completely different. In the Pacific Ocean region, tsunami early warning systems have been in place for years, particularly in Japan and the United States, to protect citizens and towns along vulnerable coastlines that have experienced

Julio Kuroiwa, is a professor emeritus of the National University of Engineering, Lima, Peru. He has been a consulting engineer for 35 years, and is the author of 100 papers on natural and technological disasters. He has written four books on disaster prevention and risk reduction. In 1990, his contributions were recognized when he was awarded the United Nations Sasakawa Award for disaster reduction. We asked him a few questions while he was visiting Geneva to present a new English version of his book “Disaster reduction: Living in harmony with nature”.

Early on the morning of 26 December an earthquake measuring 8.9 on the Richter Scale struck South Asia off the north west coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The quake was the largest in magnitude since 1964, triggering tidal waves that caused

One year after this tragedy, the reconstruction process is slow and most of city’s inhabitants are still living under tents and provisional shelters. The Iranian Government has since hosted a number of conferences bringing together earthquake experts and

“The talks that will take place next week in Buenos Aires on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol, will be an important step forward,” says Sálvano Briceño, Director of the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction

In cooperation with the Ministry of Emergency Situations and Civil Defence and UNDP Tajikistan, UNISDR will organize a first regional consultative meeting at the UN building-conference hall, 93, Anini Street, Dushanbe, Tajikistan on the 1-2 December 2005