This blog captures the key recommendations for the United Nations Seventh Asia-Pacific Urban Forum (APUF-7) from the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance’s session on the importance of transboundary action and inclusive governance in building urban flood resilience.
Nowadays, it is difficult to imagine any ‘serious’ conversation on disaster risk reduction (DRR) that doesn’t emphasise the importance of local communities, their participation and their local knowledge. Global policies, including the Sendai Framework and Paris Agreement, clearly point out that local knowledge has a role to play in reducing risks and adapting to change. […]
A major challenge in understanding community flood resilience is the lack of an empirically validated measure of it. To plug this gap the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance (ZFRA) developed the Flood Resilience Measurement for Communities (FRMC). In the first phase of the Alliance we applied the FRMC tool in 118 communities in nine different countries. This is what […]
To increase efforts to respond to increasing risk it is vital to ensure that flood resilience building is central to national governments efforts to tackle the climate crisis. The UNFCCC mandated five year action plans that document national commitments to climate action the aptly named Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) are a great opportunity to do […]
This Sunday, the 13th of October, is the 30th International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction (IDDRR). An initiative started by the UN General Assembly in 1989 in order to promote a global culture of disaster risk reduction. This year the theme is ‘Build to Last’.
Several years ago, we identified flood forecasts as a unique opportunity to improve people’s lives, and began looking into how Google’s infrastructure and machine learning expertise can help in this field. Last year, we started our flood forecasting pilot in the Patna region, and since then we have expanded our flood forecasting coverage, as part […]
Finding positive takeaways from a catastrophe loss can be tough, but analyzing how a natural event became a humanitarian disaster can help communities build resilience against future catastrophes.
On September 23rd, world leaders will answer UN Secretary-General António Guterres’ call to come to UN headquarters for a Climate Action Summit with “concrete, realistic plans” to fight the climate emergency. The Summit will provide a platform for governments, the private sector, civil society, local authorities and other international organizations to develop ambitious solutions and […]
Floods affect more people around the world than any other hazard. This blog explains why we need to acknowledge the vital role resilience against floods and other hazards play in countries’ abilities to reach the Sustainable Development Goals.
