Climate Risk and Early Warnings System (CREWS) hosted a session on lessons learned from the devastatiing effects of the 2017 hurricane season in the Caribbean. Early warning systems for the region are under review ahead of this year's season which starts on June 1.

More needs to be done to reduce response times to tsunami alerts and and to improve wave height measurement if progess is to be made on reducing mortality from tsunamis, an international gathering of experts heard this week.

Tsunamis may be rare events along the French coasts but they do occur. The French tsunami alert centre, CENALT, has already provided more than 24 tsunami information alerts and issued 3 tsunamis advisory warning messages since the beginning of its operations in 2012.

The UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mr. Robert Glasser, today expressed his concern for the people and Government of Indonesia as the likelihood of a large volcanic eruption on Bali’s Mount Agung continues to become more imminent.

The UN Deputy Secretary-General Ms. Amina J. Mohammed opened a high-level panel discussion in New York this week as part of the build up to World Tsunami Awareness Day on November 5.

Struck three months ago by a cyclone that affected 500,000 of its 24 million people, the climate-vulnerable Indian Ocean nation of Madagascar sees early warning and disaster preparedness as fundamental to its future resilience.

International broadcasting federations have vowed to step up their work to spread information about disaster risk reduction to their audiences, thereby giving a critical boost to efforts by governments.

Advances in early warning systems and disaster risk awareness have saved tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.