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Capacity development

The process of developing technical skills and institutional capability to effectively reduce disaster risk and build disaster resilience. Capacity development involves learning and various types of training, but also continuous efforts to develop institutions, political awareness, financial resources, technology systems and the wider enabling environment. Training and capacity building is a key disaster risk management activity.

Latest Capacity development additions in the Knowledge Base

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A sunrise casts its light over the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of West Los Angeles, in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfires.
Update
Knowing better, but still losing more: why disaster risk reduction breaks down

What lesson should we draw from the surviving house in Pacific Palisades during the 2025 California wildfires?

European Geosciences Union
Team of people working together and combining pieces of gears
Update
How capacity building helps climate adaptation last

Climate adaptation increasingly depends on specialized knowledge — from climate modelling and flood mapping to water management and data analysis — as well as local knowledge, developed over generations.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
woman on the construction of a hut at Omorate on Ethiopia
Blog
Israel Hinkossa
Gamifying Gadaa: Indigenous knowledge meets real trees
A statistics graduate in rural Ethiopia built a game that translates the UNESCO‑recognized Oromo Gadaa democracy into digital climate action, allowing players to earn points that fund real‑world, community‑verified reforestation.
A river wall is being reinforced in Guaranda, Colombia.
Update
Enhancing early warning capacity in Colombia

The Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) is advancing its Building Disaster Early Warning Capacity project in Cali, Colombia through recent completion of an in-person DisasterAWARE training and a dedicated Training of Trainers (ToT) program.

Pacific Disaster Center
Historic commercial buildings on Milk Market Road in historic city center of Bridgetown, Barbados
Blog
Cheryl Griffith Lizra Fabien
Resilience, real and lived: Lessons on strengthening Caribbean MSMEs
Work on micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) resilience often centres on frameworks, tools and systems. Yet resilience is ultimately about people and the realities businesses face every day.
Update
How investors can bridge the funding gap for resilient infrastructure

Traditional infrastructure-funding models rarely factor in resilience to geoclimatic events. Yet, the impact of extreme weather on existing and future global infrastructure could generate economic losses as high as 19% of GDP by 2050.

Boston Consulting Group
Update
Private sector-led capacity building: ARISE Philippines launches 2026 hands-only CPR campaign

ARISE Philippines has commenced its 2026 Hands-Only CPR Campaign, reinforcing private sector engagement in disaster risk reduction (DRR) and contributing to national resilience-building efforts.

ARISE Philippines
A street and houses in Thimpu, the capital city of the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan
Update
Bhutan learns from New Zealand’s experience in disaster-resilient infrastructure

Ten engineers and architects from Bhutan spent six days in Christchurch, enhancing their expertise in damage assessment and retrofitting of critical urban infrastructure, drawing lessons from the city’s post-quake reconstruction lessons.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
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