UNDRR News

When a city joins the 'Making Cities Resilient' campaign, the media gets very active, explained Piyush Ranjan Rout, co-founder and Executive Director of the Local Governments Network, a non-government organization in Bhubaneswar, India.

A week after Tropical Storm Sendong hit the Philippines, aid agencies are focusing attention on an estimated 14,000 children who make up about a third of displaced persons in evacuation centres, including those separated from their families...

In 2010, Beirut, Baalbek, Byblos, Tyre, Saida and Tripoli, six of Lebanon’s most prominent and historic cities, together joined the UN’s “Making Cities Resilient” campaign, signalling a strong intent to improve their people’s safety and preparedness. Today, the number of Lebanese cities in the campaign has grown to 58.

UNISDR has organized an exchange visit between the Philippines and Japan, two of the countries worst-affected this year by a series of disasters ranging from a major earthquake which triggered a tsunami and a nuclear meltdown in Japan, and back-to-back typhoons in the case of the Philippines...

Members of parliament from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Senegal, Uganda and the East African Legislative Assembly came together in Geneva this week to agree on the establishment of a Global Advisory Group for parliamentarians with UNISDR’s Special Adviser on Parliamentarians, Feng Min Kan.

President Benigno Aquino of the Philippines today declared a “National State of Calamity” as the official death toll from Typhoon Sendong reached almost 1,000 and 338,000 people remain affected in 13 southern and central provinces. Almost 50,000 people who lost their homes are in shelters.

The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative on Disaster Risk Reduction, Margareta Wahlström, today extended her sympathy to the people of Mindanao in the Philippines, following the great loss of life resulting from Typhoon Sendong.

Crisis mapping has emerged in the last five years as a dynamic and open way to visualize and report on crisis and disasters. With increasing internet connectivity, mobile phone use, and user-generated content, 'crowdsourcing' is gaining traction by taking advantage of information communication technology (ICT) that allows communities and networks to answer some of the world’s most pressing issues.

Acting Director for UNISDR, Helena Molin Valdes, spoke to SciDevNet about the need for improving access to information in dealing with disasters, during the four-day Eye on Earth Summit in Abu Dhabi from 12-15 December.

The UN office for disaster risk reduction, UNISDR, and ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability have completed a four-month pilot test of the Local Government Self-Assessment Tool (LG-SAT) designed to help disaster risk reduction efforts in over 1,000 cities and local governments that have signed up to UNISDR's global "Making Cities Resilient" Campaign. LG-SAT has been made possible with funding from the World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction and the European Commission's Humanitarian Aid branch, ECHO.