Update

Some of the most dramatic images of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami came from Sendai City where tsunami waves travelled up to 10 km inland resulting in many deaths, flooding of the airport and the sweeping away of cars and airplanes. In July 2012, the Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, UNISDR, Margareta Wahlström, formally welcomed Sendai City as a member of UNISDR’s Making Cities Resilient Campaign, which now has over 1,400 participating local governments. Ms. Emiko Okuyama, the Mayor of Sendai, Japan is one of more than 50 Mayors from around the world attending the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2013, taking place in Geneva this week. The “Meet the Mayors” interview series aims to showcase the actions local governments participating in the Making Cities Resilient Campaign are taking to reduce disaster risk and strengthen the resilience of their communities.

City mayors and municipal councilors from around the world today called on governments to ensure greater participation of local authorities in decision-making on mainstreaming disaster risk reduction in national policy and regulatory frameworks.

Dawn Zimmer, Mayor of Hoboken, NJ (USA), is one of more than 50 Mayors from around the world who will attend the Fourth Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction 2013, taking place in Geneva, 19-23 May. The “Meet the Mayors” interview series aims to showcase the actions local governments participating in UNISDR's Making Cities Resilient Campaign are taking to reduce disaster risk and strengthen the resilience of their communities.

The celebrated medical journal The Lancet is publishing a major review of the world's first comprehensive agreement on how to reduce disaster risk, the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA), under the headline "Mitigating disasters -- a promising start."

A senior official from the Philippines town of San Francisco, which won the 2011 Sasakawa Award for Disaster Risk Reduction, has spent the last five days journeying across Central America to exchange information with local authorities on best practice to make urban settings safer from natural hazards.

UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, today welcomed the European Union's newly announced strategy on adaptation to climate change and stated: "The adoption of this new strategy is a major incentive for European states to step up their efforts for disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

When college sophomore Sam Johnson started a Facebook page following the September 2010 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, to rally his peers to help affected communities, he never imagined that his idea would eventually mobilize an 'army' of young people across the country to take up similar efforts.

Outer space isn't a place organizations usually think of when looking to build resilience and reduce disaster risks. Yet, this is exactly where participants' minds were when experts were invited by UNISDR and the UN's Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) to discuss the incorporation of space technology into the post-2015 disaster risk reduction framework.

Five years after Cyclone Nargis claimed over 138,000 lives, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction is joining forces with the media in Myanmar to highlight the lessons learned as the anniversary of the tragedy comes around.

Early last Saturday morning, some 1,000 residents of the city of Hoboken in New Jersey, birthplace of the legendary crooner Frank Sinatra, came out in full force and high spirits to run a special race in aid of Hurricane Sandy disaster relief in both Hoboken and its sister city Port Maria in Jamaica.