DRR Community Voices

The DRR Community Voices share personal stories and perspectives from the disaster risk reduction trenches on reducing risk and building resilience.

  • Our posts from both practitioners and academics reach a global audience and can influence policy, practices and approaches.
  • We invite you to propose your own blog and submit it for review.

Republishing guidelines

  • Please contact us if you wish to republish a blog article.
  • Most articles can be republished under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO Deed.
  • You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made.
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Mini buoy which is part of the CoastalSense network
Blog
Giovanni Cynthia Pradipta Hilman Arioaji Ida Bagus Oka Agastya Ni Nyoman Era Jumantini
CoastalSense: Empowering community with low-cost technology for coastal resilience
CoastalSense, an initiative by U-INSPIRE Indonesia, uses low-cost, community-led technology to deliver real-time data for disaster resilience, empowering villages to take charge of their future.
Graphic drawing communication with a thought
Blog
Anni Fordham
Beyond barriers: best practice tips for translating emergency information
When emergencies strike, clear communication saves lives. Yet, accessing critical information remains challenging for many culturally and linguistically diverse communities.
Panoramic, colorful, sunlit view from the Lakes summit on Rila mountain, Bulgaria: The Twin lake, The Trefoil lake, Fish Lake and The Lower lake
Blog
Alex Mackey
Glacier-related disaster risk reduction: Enhancing resilience from mountains to valleys
Risks from GLOFs are expected to increase as new lakes form from melting and rapidly retreating glaciers due to climate change. The number of glacial lakes has increased by 53 per cent since 1990.
A lone fisherman on the east coast of Barbados during COVID-19 shutdown.
Blog
Christal Benjamin
Risk communication for early action in Barbados: Findings, learnings and opportunities for scale
There is an urgent need to scale up and integrate good practices for early warning and early action in Barbados, and other Small Island Developing States in the Caribbean and around the world.
a mother with her son
Blog
Gefra Fulane
To build trust, start by listening: Introducing the Community Trust Index for early warning systems
Too often, disaster risk reduction (DRR) strategies focus on delivering information, rather than understanding how people receive it and what makes them act. Risk, after all, is not just something calculated by meteorologists or agencies.
Car damage after a tornado
Blog
Ommid Saberi Diep Nguyen-van Houtte
From risk to resilience: A new tool to build safer cities
Green buildings have made real progress over the past decade. At IFC, our Excellence in Design for Greater Efficiencies (EDGE) green building programme has helped to certify thousands of energy- and resource-efficient buildings.
water in a city
Blog
Jamal Bahaj
Yemen’s front lines of resilience: How local action is saving lives from floods and conflict
Yemen Al-Khair for Relief and Development (YARD) has long understood that building resilience in Yemen's complex context requires local leadership, evidence-based planning and community engagement.
The components of the Makati early warning system
Blog
Zean Denice T. Campo
From warnings to action: How Makati is building a resilient future with MAWARI
MAWARI is more than just an early warning system. It's a philosophy of disaster risk reduction rooted in science, local knowledge and community trust. At its core is one simple but powerful belief: information alone doesn't save lives.