Disaster and crisis
Disaster risk reduction treats disasters as the outcome of hazard meeting exposure and vulnerability with insufficient capacity, so most of the work happens before the event: understanding risk, governing it, investing in resilience and preparing to respond and build back better.
- 01In briefThe short answer
- 02Three mandatesThe field, seen three ways
- 03The systemic questionCascades, concurrent crises and the recovery gap
- 04FrameworksThe Sendai architecture
- 05CouplingsDisaster and money
- 06GroundingThe methods behind the field
- 07Key termsTerms used on this page
GCRI · Institution · service level R0
The short answer.
Disaster and crisis as a field of risk covers how hazards become disasters through exposure and vulnerability, and how risk reduction, preparedness, response and recovery change the outcome. In the Nexus Consortium it is studied as science at GCRI by Climate and Hazards as well as Disaster Resilience and Recovery, governed at GRF by Disaster and Crisis Governance, and understood financially at GRA by Reinsurance and Catastrophe as well as Disaster Risk Finance; this gateway links those platforms and the methods they share.
Water security in Kenya.
Rivers, lakes and how far each division sits from mapped surface water, shown for Kenya as an example geography for this subject.
The field, seen three ways.
Financial understanding
Reinsurance and Catastrophe, Disaster Risk Finance, Public Finance and Sovereign Debt
Cascades, concurrent crises and the recovery gap.
Losses are increasingly driven by cascading and concurrent events: an earthquake followed by fire and supply-chain disruption, a cyclone hitting during an epidemic, a flood in a country already in debt distress. The UNDRR Global Assessment Report has argued for a systemic view of risk because sector-by-sector plans miss these combinations.
- Multi-hazard early warning that links forecasts to anticipatory action.
- Loss and damage accounting that is consistent enough to compare across years and countries.
- Recovery financing that arrives before households sell productive assets.
The Sendai architecture.
| Framework or body | What it governs or supplies |
|---|---|
| Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030 | Four priorities and seven global targets, reported through the Sendai Framework Monitor |
| UNDRR terminology and the Hazard Information Profiles | Common definitions of disaster, risk, resilience and the hazards themselves |
| Early Warnings for All | Risk knowledge, monitoring and forecasting, dissemination, preparedness |
| INSARAG and Sphere | Search-and-rescue methodology and humanitarian minimum standards |
Disaster and money.
- Insurance: the protection gap between economic and insured losses.
- Sovereign finance: contingent liabilities and post-disaster borrowing.
- Climate: changing hazard frequency.
The science sits on Disaster Resilience and Recovery; methods start from decision analysis.
The methods behind the field.
- Climate and atmospheric science
- Earth and geophysical science
- Forecasting and time-series analysis
- Extreme value theory and tail risk
- Earth observation and remote sensing
- Spatial statistics and geostatistics
- High-performance, cloud and edge computing
- Hydrology and water science
- Ocean and coastal science
- Space systems and satellite services
- Decision analysis under uncertainty
- Social and behavioural science
- Optimization and operations research
- Geospatial information systems
- Structural and earthquake engineering
- Policy, institutional and decision science
- Actuarial mathematics
- Uncertainty quantification and model validation
- Economics and development economics
- Econometrics
- Scenario design and stress testing
Terms used on this page.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Disaster | A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or society due to hazardous events interacting with exposure, vulnerability and capacity. |
| Disaster risk governance | The system of institutions, mechanisms, policies and legal frameworks that guide and coordinate disaster risk reduction, as UNDRR defines it. |
| Disaster risk finance | Financial planning and instruments that ensure money is available to manage disaster costs when needed, arranged before or after an event. |
| Disaster risk reduction | Preventing new and reducing existing disaster risk and managing residual risk, contributing to resilience and sustainable development. |
Where this page's references lead.
The bodies and documents this page is read against. Status and editions change; each link goes to the issuing body.
Questions and answers.
Why does GCRI host field gateways?
Around GCRI.
Start with an enquiry.
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.