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Displaying 90 of about 164 resultsPARIS, 24 February 2017 – Deploying the power of technology worldwide and ensuring that communities know how to act in an emergency are the keys to curbing the risks posed by tsunamis, experts said this week.
Senior officials from the world’s regional tsunami alert centres have spent the past four days taking stock of progress in the development and im…
GENEVA, 2 February 2017 – Sites such as mangroves, coral reefs, flood plains or peat marshes are natural buffers against weather hazards including storms and floods, according to experts marking this year’s World Wetlands Day.
“Disasters and disaster risk are rising,” said Ms. Jane Madgwick, Chief Executive Officer of Wetlands International. “Ninety pe…
KUROSHIO, Japan, 1 December 2016 – Hundreds of high school students from around the world have pledged to step up efforts to reduce disaster risk, at a global gathering held to mark the first edition of World Tsunami Awareness Day.
The 25-26 November High School Students Summit in the southern Japanese town of Kuroshio brought together 360 young people…
BALACLAVA, Mauritus, 25 November 2016 - African countries held a special session yesterday to mark the creation of World Tsunami Awareness Day as they acknowledged a rare but deadly threat which has come to be a worldwide symbol of disaster risk since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami claimed some 230,000 lives.
The UN Secretary-General’s Special Represent…
NEW YORK, 4 November 2016 – One is a Czech model-turned-activist, and the other a student who hails from Spain. Their lives changed forever on 26 December 2004, when they were caught up in the tragedy of the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Both have become tireless campaigners for disaster risk reduction.
Ms. Petra Nemcova and Mr. Tomas Alvarez Belon took to the…
NEW DELHI, 3 November 2016 - If proper coastal security measures had been in place at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami in March 2011, many lives could have been saved, according to the Japanese MP, Mr. Toshihiro Nikai, who is also the Secretary-General of the governing Liberal Democratic Party.
Mr. Nikai, a leading advocate for W…
BUCHAREST, 28 September 2016 – Scientists and disaster risk experts from the Mediterranean and beyond have vowed to step up efforts to raise awareness among the general public of how to react to the threat of tsunamis.
“Public awareness is one of the most important activities,” said Professor Ahmet Cevdet Yalciner of Turkey’s Middle East Technical Univ…
BRUSSELS, 4 July 2019 - The UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE) and the Ministry of the Interior for Finland have joined together to develop a new stress test tool that will help countries understand and improve their ability to reduce risk of hybrid threats and casc…
JAKARTA, 29 May 2019 – Following the deaths or disappearances of over 4,600 people last year in 2,426 recorded disaster events, Indonesia is stepping up efforts to improve disaster risk management. Indonesia straddles the so-called “Ring of Fire” in the Pacific Ocean making it vulnerable to earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
The countr…
BANGKOK, 9 April 2019 - To save lives, countries must customize how messages from their early warning systems reach at-risk populations.
This was the key takeaway from the Asia Pacific Forum for Sustainable Development side event on improving the “downstream” aspects of early warning systems.
This session was organized by the UN Office for Disaster Ri…
GENEVA, 24 January, 2019 – Earthquakes and tsunamis accounted for the majority of the 10,733 lives lost in disasters last year while extreme weather events accounted for most of 61.7 million people affected by natural hazards, according to analysis of 281 events recorded by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) in its EM-…
PARIS, 27 June 2017 – Early warning technology is vital to save lives if a tsunami strikes, but public awareness of how to react is the critical factor, according to experts at an international meeting.
“Exposed communities need tsunami literacy,” Mr. Andi Eka Sakya of Indonesia’s BMKG Meteorological, Climatological and Geophysical Agency told the asse…
NEW YORK, 5 November, 2018 - Tsunamis are rare but devastating. I saw this first-hand during my recent visit to Sulawesi, Indonesia, shortly after the earthquake and tsunami of 28 September. More than 2,000 people died and thousands more were harmed or displaced.
As well as struggling to deal with the losses and trauma, the people of S…
PARIS, 17 October, 2018 - A meeting to raise tsunami awareness opened with one minute’s silence yesterday in memory of the 2,000 confirmed dead and 680 officially missing in the tsunami and earthquake which struck Indonesia on September 28.
The double disaster left almost 70,000 people homeless and 11,000 injured in the Indonesian cities of P…
By Mami Mizutori and Achim Steiner
In May 2008, less than four years after the Indian Ocean tsunami resulted in the loss of 230,000 lives, the world witnessed another disaster which provided a tragic illustration of the price people and nations pay in the absence of effective early warning systems being in place.
Despite warnings to the governme…