Disaster Resilience and Recovery
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Preparedness is the knowledge, plans, stocks and capacities that let governments, services, businesses and households respond to a disaster and recover. Continuity planning applies the same idea to the critical functions of an organization. This page sets out how preparedness is built and how it decays, how capacity is measured, and what evidence serves the authorities and operators who must be ready.
GCRI · In development · service level R0
Disaster preparedness is the knowledge, plans, stocks and capacities that let governments, services and households respond to and recover from disasters. Continuity planning applies the same discipline to an organization's critical functions. Preparedness decays between events unless plans, stocks and training are maintained and tested.
For preparedness and continuity, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and flood water, framed on the Philippines; every other NASA layer, live feed and forecast waits in the layer list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For preparedness and continuity, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and flood water, 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.
Layers and dates
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Preparedness and continuity · Province C · Monsoon season
| Cash to at-risk households | 72 h | 47 | Yes |
| Livestock evacuation | 48 h | 13 | Partial |
| Shelter kits | 72 h | 23 | Yes |
Organizational capacity and continuity. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Prepositioned supplies expire, equipment breaks, trained staff move on and contact lists go out of date. Preparedness that is not maintained loses value quietly between events.
Plans rely on roads, power, communications and staff being available. When a disaster removes those conditions, plans written for normal circumstances stall.
Agencies that have never worked together lose time agreeing roles during a response. Standing arrangements, shared procedures and joint exercises save that time.
A hospital, water utility or government office continues only if its suppliers, staff and premises do. Continuity planning that ignores these dependencies fails when they fail.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Contingency plan | A plan prepared in advance for a specific hazard or scenario, setting roles, resources and actions. |
| Prepositioning | Placing relief supplies near areas at risk before a disaster to shorten delivery time. |
| Critical activity | An activity whose interruption would cause unacceptable harm, which continuity planning protects. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Contingency plans tested in the last cycle | percent of plans | annual | Exercise and plan review records | REPORTED |
| Prepositioned relief stocks | units of items against planning figures | quarterly | Logistics records | REPORTED |
| Emergency operations centres with backup power and communications | count | annual | Facility assessments | OBSERVED |
| Critical services with continuity plans | percent of designated critical services | annual | Continuity programme records | DECLARED |
| Trained responders | count by role per population | annual | Training registers | REPORTED |
| Stock past expiry | percent of stock items | quarterly | Inventory records | OBSERVED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| Sendai Framework Monitor | National reporting on preparedness-related indicators | Public, UN terms of use |
| IFRC GO platform | Emergency appeals, operations and preparedness information from Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies | Public, IFRC terms (to check) |
| OCHA Humanitarian Data Exchange | Shared datasets on emergencies, populations and logistics | Open, licence per dataset |
| ISO 22301 and ISO 22313 | Requirements and guidance for business continuity management | Licensed standards, purchase required |
| National civil protection and emergency management plans | Published plans, roles and capacities | Public records, licence per government |
Disaster Resilience and Recovery prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| National disaster management authorities | Which capacities, stocks and plans to maintain and where | Capacity reviews; prepositioning analyses |
| Operators of critical services | Which functions must continue and what they depend on | Continuity dependency reviews |
| Local governments | How to organize local emergency operations and shelters | Facility assessments; local capacity evidence |
Specialists in preparedness and continuity focus on whether arrangements hold when tested.
Plans often assume that people will be available, that communications will work, that suppliers will deliver and that other agencies will do their part. In real events, staff are themselves affected, networks are congested or down, suppliers face the same disruption and agencies interpret their roles differently. Failures cluster at interfaces: between levels of government, between public and private operators, and between emergency services and the organizations that run water, power and health care.
Continuity depends on knowing dependencies in advance, on redundancy and substitutes for critical inputs, and on people who have practised their roles together. Preparedness also decays: staff move on, contact lists age and equipment is not maintained. Regular exercise and review are what keep a plan alive.
Structured review of plans, resources and arrangements. Self-assessment tends to overstate readiness.
Mapping inputs to essential functions with operations research. Hidden dependencies often emerge only in events or exercises.
Structured learning from events and exercises. Lessons are often recorded but not implemented.
Comparing how similar organizations fared, with social and behavioural science. Context limits how far findings transfer.
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.