Standards and normative mechanisms for Disaster Risk Reduction

The aim of this paper is to help bring voluntary standards into the toolbox of disaster risk reduction, including both by encouraging their use by business and by enhancing their role in legislation and regulatory practice. To this end, the paper reveals the potential the standards may have in the prevention and reduction of disaster risks, and in the management of crises.

The conclusions drawn from this paper are that:

• Authorities can build awareness for standards in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), by facilitating access to relevant standards, encouraging education on DRR-related standards and involving the standardization community.
• Standards need to be sustained by a powerful infrastructure that allows for reliable inspections, audits and precise measurements to be conducted by skilled professionals.
• Risk management best practice needs to embed, as emdodies in standards, more fully in regulatory frameworks in sectors that are relevant to DRR.

This document is a background paper of the 2015 Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction.