09 Oct 2017

Germany opened ESCAP Disaster Resilience Week

by GIDRM

The first ESCAP Disaster Resilience Week was organized around the 5th Session of the ESCAP Committee on Disaster Risk Reduction which took place from the 10th – 12th October 2017. A number of events were organized as part of the ESCAP Disaster Resilience Week focusing on coherence between the 2030 Agenda and the Sendai Framework, regional cooperation in multi-hazard early warning systems, disaster information and knowledge management, application of space technology and geographic information systems for disaster risk reduction and SDG monitoring and disaster risk financing.

The Disaster Resilience Week was officially opened by Jan Scheer, Deputy Head of Mission and Head of Economic Affairs, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Thailand. In his opening speech he stressed the importance of strong risk-governance and regional action for resilience building and the role of untraditional stakeholders like the private sector in building resilience.

GIDRM contributed especially to the Expert Group Meeting on Regional Cooperation in Early Warning for Transboundary River Basin Floods, Flash Floods and Landslides in Asia and the Pacific. During the discussions on regional cooperation for early warning, GIDRM shared lessons learned from local flood early warning systems for small river basins and the need for regional cooperation on harmonized alert level systems.

Furthermore, the suitability model was presented at the Regional Learning Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience-Building: Ensuring Coherence Across The Global Development Agendas as a tool to support coherence between the global agendas by allowing local governments to integrate disaster and climate risks in their land use planning and ensure risk-informed investment decisions.