Disaster Resilience and Recovery
The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Disaster risk reduction policy decides whether new risk is built into roads, homes and towns, and whether existing risk is reduced before the next event. Strategies, laws, budgets and land-use rules carry that policy into practice. This page sets out how risk reduction policy works and fails, how progress is measured against the Sendai Framework, and what evidence serves the ministries and local governments that set and fund it.
The interactive map needs JavaScript; the layer list and sources are below.
Layers 3
People and hazards, for this page
Keyboard, with the map focused
Hold Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll to zoom
Latest available
NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
Loading the latest NASA imagery.
Drag to move. Ctrl or ⌘ and scroll, pinch or the buttons to zoom; hover for the values under the pointer; reset returns to the region.
For risk reduction policy, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on population density, true-colour imagery and night lights with true colour from NASA GIBS, 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
Disaster risk reduction policy is the set of strategies, laws, budgets and land-use rules that prevent new disaster risk and reduce existing risk. It succeeds when development stops building risk into hazard-exposed places and when prevention is funded. Progress is tracked against the Sendai Framework targets.
The working screen behind this subject: its structure, terms and states. Names are placeholders and values illustrative.
Risk reduction policy · Affected area North · Day 113 after event
local units, millions, estimated
| Housing | 58 | 46 | 191 | 19 |
| Transport | 158 | 44 | 220 | 58 |
| Water and sanitation | 44 | 29 | 54 | 73 |
| Agriculture | 15 | 130 | 90 | 28 |
| Health | 5 | 16 | 45 | 86 |
progress vs baseline, illustrative
Prevention and risk-informed development. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Most future disaster risk is being built now, as housing, infrastructure and industry expand into hazard-exposed places without risk-informed rules. Preventing new risk is cheaper than reducing it later.
Budgets favour response, which is visible, over prevention, whose benefits are avoided losses that never appear. Risk reduction competes with immediate needs and often loses.
Risk reduction touches planning, finance, environment, health and infrastructure ministries. When a disaster agency holds the mandate without the budget or authority over other sectors, policy stays on paper.
National strategies depend on local governments to enforce building codes, plan land use and maintain drainage. Where local revenue and staff are thin, delivery lags behind policy.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Sendai Framework | The United Nations framework, adopted by member states, that sets seven targets and four priorities for reducing disaster risk. |
| Risk-informed development | Development planning that takes account of disaster risk so that new investments do not create new risk. |
| Residual risk | The disaster risk that remains even when effective risk reduction measures are in place. |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National disaster risk reduction strategy in line with Sendai | status as reported | annual | Sendai Framework Monitor target E | OFFICIAL |
| Local governments with risk reduction strategies | percent of local governments | annual | Sendai Framework Monitor target E | OFFICIAL |
| Public spending on risk reduction | share of public investment tagged to risk reduction | annual | Budget tagging and expenditure reviews | ESTIMATED |
| Building permits subject to hazard review | percent of permits | annual | Local planning records | REPORTED |
| Disaster risk reduction law in force | status and date of enactment | per change | National legal databases | OFFICIAL |
| Development in mapped hazard zones | hectares of new built-up area | annual | Satellite built-up area and hazard maps | ESTIMATED |
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 against the seven targets and indicators | Public, UN terms of use |
| UNDRR Global Assessment Report | Global analysis of disaster risk and progress on risk reduction | Public, UN terms of use |
| IFRC Disaster Law Database | Disaster risk management laws and policies by country | Public, IFRC terms (to check) |
| Global Human Settlement Layer (European Commission JRC) | Built-up area and settlement growth over time | Open, CC BY 4.0 |
| Public expenditure and financial accountability reviews | Assessments of budget processes, including contingency and risk spending | Public records, terms per publisher |
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 priorities the national strategy should carry, and how progress is tracked | Policy reviews; Sendai indicators; local strategy coverage |
| Ministries of finance and planning | How much to invest in prevention, and how to tag and protect that spending | Budget tagging evidence; cost of past disasters |
| Local governments | Where to restrict development or require resilient construction | New development in hazard zones; permit review records |
| Legislatures | Whether disaster risk management law gives clear mandates and resources | Comparative law and policy evidence |
Researchers in risk reduction policy ask how prevention can compete with more visible priorities.
Prevention offers benefits that are uncertain, delayed and invisible when they work, while its costs are immediate and certain. Political and budget cycles reward visible response more than avoided losses. Development pressure pushes building into floodplains, unstable slopes and coastal zones where land is available, and enforcement of codes is often weakest where growth is fastest, particularly in informal settlements.
Effective risk reduction tends to share features: clear legal mandates, risk information that is available to planners, screening of public investment, enforcement capacity at local level and attention to the people least able to protect themselves. It also depends on coherence across sectors, so that a road, a school and a housing programme do not each add risk that another agency must later manage.
Comparative study of laws, mandates and budgets, drawing on social and behavioural science. Formal rules may differ from practice.
Hazard, exposure and vulnerability mapping with geospatial information systems. Vulnerability data is often coarse or outdated.
Comparison of options under uncertainty using decision analysis. Results depend on discounting and on which losses are counted.
Comparing similar events before and after measures. Few natural experiments exist and attribution is uncertain.
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.