Australia

It’s 6:00 am one September day when a powerful undersea earthquake rocks the Makran Trench along the coast of Pakistan and Iran. Minutes later, the tsunami warning centres in India and Indonesia issue simultaneous alerts, followed rapidly by their counterpart in Australia, and authorities across the Indian Ocean swing into action. It's all a test, and a critical component of the region's disaster preparedness.

World Tsunami Awareness Day makes its debut on the international calendar this November, and disaster experts from around the Indian Ocean have been given an early opportunity to step up and get involved.

Tsunami experts from across the Indian Ocean have gathered in Australia this week to work on ways to improve their ability to ward off a repeat of the tragedy that struck the region in 2004.

Australian businesses are coming together to improve community safety and outcomes following natural disasters in a country that is confronted reguarly by events such as bushfires, floods, cyclones and severe storm activity.

Australia could see its annual disaster bill rise nearly fourfold by 2050, with the cost of social impacts such as stress-related illness playing a significant role, two reports commissioned by the Australian Business Roundtable for Disaster Resilience and Safer Communities warn.

This publication aims to shed some light on women’s capabilities to take leading roles in building disaster resilience. It features women as drivers of change in different socio-economic contexts, and under various gender conditions.

While the examples

The Mayor of one of the municipalities in UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient campaign has been in the lead of preparedness efforts ahead of Cyclone Marcia which continues to lash Australia’s east coast and its hinterland.

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.

Australia’s Emergency Media and Public Affairs (EMPA) organization was born out of a desire to share lessons learned after Cyclone Larry in 2006 and it has been doing that every year since in unique style through its annual conferences.

“Disaster risk reduction should not be seen only as an imperative to protecting investments in development, but also as an opportunity for a transformative shift towards resilient development.” This rousing statement from disaster-prone Bangladesh was one of several calls from governments for disaster and climate risk considerations to be incorporated at every stage of development. The seventh session of the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals heard consistent support for the integration of disaster risk management within each sector that may be addressed by the goals, such as poverty eradication, energy, health, food security.