A disaster is an event that causes serious harm to people, buildings, economies, or the environment, and the affected community cannot handle it alone. Natural disasters like avalanches, floods, earthquakes, and wildfires are caused by natural hazards. Human-made disasters like oil spills, terrorist attacks and power outages are caused by people. Nowadays, it is hard to separate natural and human-made disasters because human actions can make natural disasters worse. Climate change also affects how often disasters due to extreme weather hazards happen.
A natural disaster is the very harmful impact on a society or community after a natural hazard event. Some examples of natural hazard events include avalanches, droughts, earthquakes, floods, heat waves, landslides, tropical cyclones, volcanic activity and wildfires. Additional natural hazards include blizzards, dust storms, firestorms, hails, ice storms, sinkholes, thunderstorms, tornadoes and tsunamis. A natural disaster can cause loss of life or damage property. It typically causes economic damage. How bad the damage is depends on how well people are prepared for disasters and how strong the buildings, roads, and other structures are. Scholars have been saying that the term natural disaster is unsuitable and should be abandoned. Instead, the simpler term disaster could be used. At the same time the type of hazard would be specified. A disaster happens when a natural or human-made hazard impacts a vulnerable community. It results from the combination of the hazard and the exposure of a vulnerable society.
The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), founded in 1959, is an international organization for higher education situated 40km north of Bangkok, Thailand. It specializes in engineering, advanced technologies, sustainable development, and management and planning. It aims to promote technological change and sustainable development in the Asia-Pacific region, through higher education, research, and outreach.
The Central Bosnia Canton is one of 10 cantons of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
A humanitarian crisis is defined as a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well-being of a community or large group of people. It may be an internal or external conflict and usually occurs throughout a large land area. Local, national and international responses are necessary in such events.
The World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction is a series of United Nations conferences focusing on disaster and climate risk management in the context of sustainable development. The World Conference has been convened three times, with each edition to date having been hosted by Japan: in Yokohama in 1994, in Hyogo in 2005 and in Sendai in 2015. As requested by the UN General Assembly, the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) served as the coordinating body for the Second and Third UN World Conference on Disaster Reduction in 2005 and 2015.
Emergency management is a science and a system charged with creating the framework within which communities reduce vulnerability to hazards and cope with disasters. Emergency management, despite its name, does not actually focus on the management of emergencies; emergency management or disaster management can be understood as minor events with limited impacts and are managed through the day-to-day functions of a community. Instead, emergency management focuses on the management of disasters, which are events that produce more impacts than a community can handle on its own. The management of disasters tends to require some combination of activity from individuals and households, organizations, local, and/or higher levels of government. Although many different terminologies exist globally, the activities of emergency management can be generally categorized into preparedness, response, mitigation, and recovery, although other terms such as disaster risk reduction and prevention are also common. The outcome of emergency management is to prevent disasters and where this is not possible, to reduce their harmful impacts.
Disaster risk reduction aims to make disasters less likely to happen. The approach, also called DRR or disaster risk management, also aims to make disasters less damaging when they do occur. DRR aims to make communities stronger and better prepared to handle disasters. In technical terms, it aims to make them more resilient or less vulnerable. When DRR is successful, it makes communities less the vulnerable because it mitigates the effects of disasters. This means DRR can make risky events fewer and less severe. Climate change can increase climate hazards. So development efforts often consider DRR and climate change adaptation together.
The Emergency Capacity Building Project is a collaborative capacity-building project aimed at improving the speed, effectiveness and delivery of humanitarian response programs. The ECB Project is a partnership between seven non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and implements programs in one region and four countries known as consortia.
The Regional Center for Disaster Information for Latin America and the Caribbean (CRID) is a specialized center for the region of the Americas for information on risk management. It was founded in 1990, by cooperating agencies and organizations. The goal was to create a platform for inter-sectoral coordination and collaboration to promote development of a culture of disaster risk reduction (DRR) within the region. Approaches include analysis, systematization and diffusion of information on risk management, promotion and strengthening of information centers, cooperative efforts with key players and a response to requirements from stakeholders.
The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) was created in December 1999 to ensure the implementation of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction.
The Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) was an organizational unit within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) charged by the President of the United States with directing and coordinating international United States government disaster assistance. USAID merged the former offices of OFDA and Food for Peace (FFP) in 2020 to form the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA).
The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (2015–2030) is an international document that was adopted by the United Nations (UN) member states between 14 and 18 March 2015 at the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Sendai, Japan, and endorsed by the UN General Assembly in June 2015. It is the successor agreement to the Hyogo Framework for Action (2005–2015), which had been the most encompassing international accord to date on disaster risk reduction.
Asian ministerial conference for disaster risk reduction (AMCDRR) is an intergovernmental conference held to discuss disaster mitigation. Its inaugural meeting was held in Beijing, in August 2005, after the adoption of Hyogo Framework for Action (2005-2015). The conference has been held seven times in collaboration with the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR). The motive of such conference was to mitigate the disaster risks. After the Indian Ocean tsunami came in 2004, India was among the five countries that were very badly impacted and took prime initiative to endorse for creating new laws for disaster risk management.
The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) is an international coalition of countries, United Nations (UN) agencies, multilateral development banks, the private sector, and academic institutions, that aims to promote disaster-resilient infrastructure. Its objective is to promote research and knowledge sharing in the fields of infrastructure risk management, standards, financing, and recovery mechanisms. It was launched by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019.
The International Recovery Platform (IRP) is a joint initiative of United Nations agencies, international financial institutions, national and local governments, and non-governmental organizations engaged in disaster recovery. IRP was founded in 2005. It came after the Second World Conference on Disaster Reduction, to support implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The group works to identify and address gaps in recovery knowledge, practice and constraints. In 2015, IRP aligned its work to support implementation of the newly adopted Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. It concentrated on Priority Four – building back better in recovery, rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Margareta Wahlström is a Swedish diplomat and social scientist who has held leading positions in the Red Cross and the United Nations. Specializing in disaster relief, from 2008 to 2015 she served as UN Assistant Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction, simultaneously heading the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. In May 2017, she was elected President of the Swedish Red Cross.
Vasiti Soko is a Fijian geographic information system (GIS) specialist and the director of the National Disaster Management Office (NDMO) of Fiji. In October 2021, she was the recipient of the inaugural Women's International Network for Disaster Risk Reduction Leadership Award, from the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
The Asia Pacific Alliance for Disaster Management (A-PAD) is a non-profit organization headquartered in Japan. Its mission is to "facilitate collaboration amongst the member countries for the purpose of delivering effective and efficient disaster assistance through disaster preparedness, risk reduction, relief and recovery."
The National Institute of Disaster Management, is a national think tank of the government of Pakistan responsible for capacity building, research, and policy development in the field of disaster management. Established with the objective of enhancing the country's resilience to natural and human-made disasters, NIDM functions under the umbrella of the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), which is the principal agency for coordinating disaster response and preparedness at the national level.
Bangladesh 
Cambodia 
China 
India 
Pakistan 
Philippines 
Nepal 
Sri Lanka 
Thailand