UNDRR News

The first anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan which took the lives of 6,300 people and resulted in US$ 10 billion in economic losses, was the impetus for a gathering of chief executives, middle managers and government officials to discuss building resilience.

A dream came true for more than 200 families from Bogo city in Cebu yesterday when they received the keys to their new homes, a year after the most powerful typhoon to make landfall in the Philippines destroyed their old houses last November.

Ito Yoshichika is one of many proud citizens of the City of Sendai who are looking forward to telling their remarkable story of recovery when the city plays host to an expected 8,000 participants at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, in March 2015.

Forty city officials from China, Japan and Republic of Korea today joined in a toast “to work towards zero casualties from disasters” as the countdown continues to the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, in Sendai, Japan, next March.

Geneva - Terry Cannon, the editor of the 2014 World Disasters Report is not afraid to ask the big questions when it comes to disaster risk reduction...

The faculty of Pakistan’s National University of Science and Technology Risalpur campus knew it was time to act when the 2010 floods devastated large swathes of their country directly affecting 20 million people.

A new cross-border multi-hazard early warning system will be developed in the Western Balkans and Turkey to increase resilience to floods, landslides, droughts and heat-waves which often hit the region and to build on the lessons learnt from the devastating floods of May 2014.

The European Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, Kristalina Georgieva, today called for a change in “the global mind-set towards disaster risk reduction” as she was confirmed as a Champion of Disaster Risk Reduction by UNISDR.

The Zero Draft of the post-2015 framework for disaster risk reduction was published and circulated widely today. It is an early draft of the final document which will be adopted at the Third UN World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction in Sendai, Japan, next March.

The United Nations Office of Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and Esri today announced a new winner in the UN Global Disaster Resilience App Challenge. The competition challenged developers to create apps that support the UNISDR Making Cities Resilient: My City is Getting Ready. Guardian Evacuations—an app written by Leon Storey and Gareck Packer that gets people to their closest evacuation center during a storm—was awarded first place in the consumer/public facing category.