UNDRR News

The repercussions from the deadly earthquake and tsunami which hit Chile two years ago continue to play out in the country's courts and in expressions of frustration at the pace of reconstruction.

The business world is on "the cusp of a major revolution" in its understanding of disaster risk reduction as insurance industry demands force a shift from traditional accounting-based management to risk-based management, according to Rowan Douglas, CEO Global Analytics at Willis Group.

Government representatives, climatologists, agricultural experts, disaster risk managers and others gather in Kigali, Rwanda, for three days next week to share information on the possibility of a third consecutive year of drought in the Horn of Africa.

A Business Forum featured for the first time at today's opening in Geneva of the biennial Private Public Partnership event, PPP Days 2012.

The Head of the UN's Disaster Risk Reduction Office, UNISDR, Margareta Wahlström, today congratulated three Philippines Senators for leading an in-depth, two-day post-mortem with local leaders into the devastating losses caused to Mindanao island by Typhoon Sendong in December.

The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNISDR, today said the European Flood Alert System could soon be put to its greatest test since widespread flooding ten years ago led to its creation by the European Commission.

Europe's vulnerability to disasters and the current tough winter "are a clear sign that we need to plan better and manage more robustly the risks we face," warns European Commissioner, Kristalina Georgieva, who is responsible for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response.

More than 40,000 people took part in a mass earthquake drill in Delhi yesterday to check the alertness and preparedness of the 16.7 million people living in the Indian capital in the event of a high intensity earthquake of 7.2 on the Richter scale.

A new briefing paper from Oxfam identifies "the limited investment in building resilience and disaster risk reduction (DRR), despite rhetoric to the contrary" as one of main failures of humanitarian aid in recent times.

For the second year in a row, Valentine's Day on the Indian Ocean island of Madagascar has been marked by the arrival of a tropical cyclone. Cyclone Giovanna made landfall on the east coast shortly after midnight, bringing torrential rain and reported wind speeds of up to 231 km per hour.