Disaster Resilience and Recovery
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Disasters are rarely confined to the area a hazard strikes. They travel through infrastructure, supply chains, public budgets, health systems and social networks, and they interact with other hazards and crises. This page sets out the main pathways by which disaster impacts cascade, and how weak preparedness and recovery in one system raise risk in others. It describes connections; it is not a forecast.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For dependencies and consequences, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on flood water, population density, active fires and true-colour imagery, framed on the Philippines; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
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GeographyFor dependencies and consequences, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on flood water, population density, active fires and true-colour imagery, framed on the Philippines; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
Dependencies and consequences in Disaster Resilience and Recovery describe how disaster and crisis as well as climate and hazards connect to other systems through physical, economic, social and ecological links, and how stress travels along them toward fields such as those of Diplomacy Nexus and Climate and Nature Governance. Every dependency map states its assumptions, data and uncertainty; it describes connections, not a forecast.
Fig.How GCRI, GRF and GRA share one field while the authorities decide. Design, not a record.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Power, water, transport, fuel and communications depend on each other. Loss of one can halt the others, and restoring them in the wrong order delays recovery.
Disrupted suppliers stop production elsewhere. Emergency and reconstruction costs strain public budgets and can crowd out development spending.
Displacement, lost income and interrupted schooling and healthcare can persist long after physical repair, and fall hardest on those with fewest reserves.
Compound and cascading events are increasingly central to the field. A heatwave during a power outage, an earthquake that triggers landslides and dam failures, a cyclone during an epidemic or a flood in a place already affected by conflict each create demands that single-hazard plans do not anticipate. Response capacity used for one event is unavailable for the next, and recovery from one shock can be interrupted by another.
Weak recovery is itself a pathway. When reconstruction rebuilds exposure, when livelihoods are not restored, or when debts taken on after one disaster limit the response to the next, risk accumulates over time. Tracking these slow pathways requires following places and households for years, not weeks.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Interdependency | A two-way dependency between infrastructures, such as power needing telecoms for control while telecoms need power to run. |
| Cascading risk | Risk that a failure in one system or component triggers failures in others that depend on it. |
| Compound event | Two or more hazards or drivers occurring together or in sequence whose joint impact exceeds what either would cause alone, such as drought followed by intense rain; IPCC assessments use the term. |
| Dependency mapping | Tracing the people, processes, technology, facilities and suppliers a service relies on. |
Cascade analysis uses decision analysis under uncertainty, operations research and geospatial analysis, with evidence from past events and exercises. Every map states its assumptions and uncertainty; see methods and uncertainty.
A dependency map describes how stress could travel. It does not predict a specific event and does not assess any individual organization.
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.