Update

Jack Dangermond, founder and President of Esri, speaks about the future of GIS in the work of the international community at the WMO-hosted GIS conference in April. (U.S. Mission photo by Eric Bridiers)
Innovations in technology have made it easier in the last decade to reduce disaster risks and plan for the future. The internet combined with technologies, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), now makes it possible to better understand and communicate the social and physical complexities of disasters.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
Margareta Wahlström visits community leaders in Prey Veng Town, Prey Veng Province in Cambodia (Photo: Jerry Velasquez)
At the start of a week-long trip to Cambodia, the UN's senior official for disaster risk reduction, Margareta Wahlström, met yesterday with a 64-year-old grandmother who saved the lives of her five grandchildren during last year's heavy monsoon rains.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific
Margareta Wahlström talks about the IPCC SREX report in her keynote address at the 6th International Conference for Community-based Adaptation in Hanoi, Viet Nam.
As she wrapped up a five-day visit to Viet Nam, Margareta Wahlström, the top UN disaster risk reduction Official, commended the Government on the ambitious Community-based Disaster Risk Management (CBDRM) Programme and the comprehensive new National Climate Change Strategy.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific
Researchers at the Anglophone Africa writeshop in Ghana discuss the best way to present their findings in a journal article. (Photo: Lisa Schipper)
Yuwan Malakar has good reason to be focused and driven these days. The 30-year old environmental management major from Nepal has just had his first paper on climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) published in one of the highly respected online journals of the Policy Studies Organization.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Africa
If sea levels rise by one metre from climate change in the next 20 years, half of Ben Tre province in southern Viet Nam could be flooded.
UNISDR Chief, Margareta Wahlström, today visited parts of Vietnam's Mekong Delta which were affected by storm surges last October and are most vulnerable to rising sea levels caused by climate change.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific
A new report on humanitarian responses states that "If other donors were to follow the lead being set by Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom, it could mean a turning point in transforming the humanitarian system from a reactive, response-driven model, to a proactive, preventive and anticipatory model."
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction
From left: Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, President of the sixty-sixth session of the General Assembly, meets with Bob Carr, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Australia prior to attending the UN General Assembly Thematic Debate on Disaster Risk Reduction.
There was a strong call for "the incorporation of disaster risk reduction in any future framework for sustainable development" during the UN General Assembly Thematic Debate on Disaster Risk Reduction yesterday which served as a major curtain raiser for Rio+20.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - New York UNHQ Liaison Office
The cost of disasters were summed up last night in dollars lost, people displaced, lives lost as one would expect at a meeting hosted by Columbia University with the theme "From Sendai to Rio -- Cultivating a Disaster-Resilient Society for Sustainable Development."
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - New York UNHQ Liaison Office
Indian Ocean tsunami early warning system was designed to combine data from underwater probes, orbiting global positioning system satellites, and floating buoys, to better detect a coming tidal wave.
Following a massive earthquake earlier today in the Indian Ocean and the threat of a tsunami, Indonesian President and UNISDR Global Disaster Risk Reduction Champion, Susilo Bambang Yudhyono, told the press, "Our early warning system is working well". There were no tsunamis in Banda Aceh or other places which were hard hit by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific
Threatened by increasing and lethal seasonal floods, the 500-year old Malaysian port city of Melaka is making considerable efforts to reduce the disaster risks that it currently faces from such climate related catastrophic events.
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific

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