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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

Vacancy
Manila
Closing date
Under the overall guidance of the Unit Head, the Capacity Building Expert will serve as ADPC’s technical capacity-strengthening and coordination focal point for LEARN activities in the Philippines.
Meetings and conferences
Online
In response to the International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction 2026, CCYPS and HADEUS Vietnam are organizing the webinar Resilience Starts at Home to raise awareness of risks within people’s own homes.
Meetings and conferences
Online
Aligned with the UNDRR's IDDRR 2026 global theme, “Resilience Starts at Home,” this event will connect the urgent need for safer homes and resilient communities with emerging opportunities for young professionals, researchers and aspiring entrepreneurs.
Update
USA: States offer students a way to show they are ‘climate literate’

More than 1,200 Colorado students have graduated with a seal demonstrating their climate awareness. The idea is spreading to other states

The Hechinger Report
Last updated 13 Oct 2026
Games can be a powerful tool to support awareness-raising initiatives and capacity building efforts in disaster risk reduction (DRR).
Update
IDDRR: GSCF launches disaster preparedness game

This free online game, inspired by the book "Tout peut changer en une minute", teaches the right reflexes before, during and after a disaster or emergency. Players face concrete situations and receive an immediate explanation of the right action.

Groupe de Secours Catastrophe Français
Sunrise over modern office buildings in business district center of Bangkok.
Update
Bangkok communities map heat risk

Participants from 25 organizations visited Bangkok’s Mahanak Mosque community during the Global Heat Forum 2026 to see how heat risk mapping helps residents identify vulnerable households, plan emergency responses and build resilience.

Asian Disaster Preparedness Center
Update
Playful preparedness: Prefigurative design in disaster anticipation

Playful preparedness uses games, improvisation and creative activities to help communities anticipate disasters, build practical skills and imagine more inclusive, resilient ways of responding to future crises.

e-fllux
Case study
Location: Dominica
This case study shows how risk analysis, nature-based solutions and capacity building are informing resilient infrastructure design and investment planning in Dominica to strengthen climate resilience and reduce disaster risk.
  • Intra Africa, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Disaster Risk Reduction Programme (DRRP)
Albania strengthens Loss & Damage data capacities through DELTA Training
Update
Albania strengthens L&D data capacities via DELTA Resilience training

Albania is strengthening its capacities to collect, manage, analyse and use disaster loss and damage data through the DELTA Resilience platform, with a technical training held in Tirana on 17 September 2026.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Europe & Central Asia
Cover page for the publication "Cities at the Frontline", with project logos at the top, and a circle cropped photo of an urban area in the bottom right corner
Documents and publications

This publication details notable highlights from the Resilience Initiative Africa Project, which was implemented by UNDRR's Regional Office for Africa between August 2023–March 2026.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Africa
Reducing communication-related vulnerability to disasters: A framework for capacity development thumbnail
Documents and publications

This paper presents a framework for disaster communication capacity development that combines audience research, engagement and scenario-based vulnerability analysis to address barriers to accessing, understanding and acting on hazard information.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (Elsevier)
Assessment tools for school disaster resilience: An integrative review thumbnail
Documents and publications

This review examines school disaster resilience assessment tools published between 2015 and 2024. Existing tools address structural, non-structural and functional resilience, but often overlook psychosocial resilience and local context adaptation.

Cambridge University Press
Developing skills for building safer homes thumbnail
Documents and publications

This document showcases how Concern Worldwide is working with Malawi’s Department of Housing to increase community awareness on flood-resilience infrastructure and training local artisanal builders to improve and construct stronger houses.

Concern Worldwide
Update
Community-driven project helps older adults prepare for extreme heat

Led in part by SFU, COPE project aims to help older adults prepare for and respond to extreme heat. The project is part of SFU Climate Innovation , a critical research priority that supports a community-centred response to the impacts of climate change.

Simon Fraser University
Vacancy
Home Based
Closing date
The Consultant will report directly to the designated technical lead at ADPC and work under the technical guidance of the ADPC and NDRF Technical Curriculum Working Group (TCWG).
Woman as first responders from Malo Island responding to Twin Cyclone in Port Vila, Vanuatu.
Update
Investing in women's leadership strengthens climate resilience

A leadership programme in Fiji found that combining climate resilience training with confidence-building and leadership development can strengthen women’s participation in climate action and support more inclusive, resilient communities.

Development Asia
Update
Learning disaster risk finance the playful way

Simulation games are not new in disaster risk and climate adaptation. Layer Up! builds on this tradition but addresses a gap: questions about the trade-offs between different risk financing instruments.

Centre for Disaster Protection
Climate in common: a communications toolkit for working class engagement thumbnail
Documents and publications

Climate in Common is a communications toolkit that will help groups connect with working class people. It gives campaigners, civil society organizations and policymakers ten practical tools for building working class engagement with climate policy.

Working Class Climate Alliance (WCCA)
Farmers irrigating in an African farm
Update
Comoros: Taking climate action from promise to progress

Despite the challenges it faces and the limited resources at its disposal, the Government of the Union of the Comoros is working to protect hard-earned development gains and chart a course to a low-carbon, climate-resilient future.

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
Vacancy
Home Based
Closing date
The assignment shall be undertaken by a multidisciplinary consulting team led by an architect/planner with demonstrated experience in institutional or specialized training facility planning.
Update
Lao PDR launches national risk reduction initiative

On June 17, 2026, Lao PDR solidified its commitment to building disaster resilience, joining 33 countries worldwide to partner with the Pacific Disaster Center (PDC) on a National Disaster Preparedness Baseline Assessment (NDPBA).

Pacific Disaster Center
A sunrise casts its light over the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of West Los Angeles, in the aftermath of the 2025 wildfires.
Update
Knowing better, yet losing more: why disaster risk reduction fails

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
Israel Hinkossa
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.
ARISE Japan Annual Symposium
National (or local) - Japan
Active
ARISE Japan is a national network of ARISE. ARISE Japan organizes "ARISE Japan Public Symposium" as its annual flagship public symposium to discuss a focused theme to contribute to the implementation of the Sendai Framework.
A river wall is being reinforced in Guaranda, Colombia.
Update
Colombia: Enhancing early warning capacity

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
Global
Active
The mission of the IWPM is to support, on request, agencies and countries to build national capacity and resilience to wildfire through the exchange of best practice in landscape fire management
Historic commercial buildings on Milk Market Road in historic city center of Bridgetown, Barbados
Cheryl Griffith Lizra Fabien
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
Philippines: Private sector CPR capacity-building campaign (2026)

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 NZ 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)
Update
USA: Fires and falsehoods in California

Security actors around the world are beginning to recognize the risks posed by information manipulation surrounding extreme weather, climate resilience, and the clean energy transition

Center for Climate and Security, The (Council on Strategic Risks)
Stop disasters game
Last updated 16 Apr 2026
This page brings together ready-to-use lesson plans, classroom activities, and teaching guides for the Stop Disasters online simulation game, developed by the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR).
Disaster preparedness capacity development: A scenario-based system for social vulnerability reduction thumbnail
Documents and publications

This study highlights gaps in all-hazards disaster preparedness approaches and examines how disaster preparedness planning can systematically draw upon social vulnerability triage.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (Elsevier)
Person at the village near Viti Levu Island; Fiji
Update
Fiji: Digital tracker monitors disaster preparedness across government

Fiji has completed training officials from roughly 30 ministries and agencies to use a new online system that, for the first time, will let the government track disaster risk reduction work across every sector from a single platform.

Pacific Community
Update
Armenia validates national roadmap for Early Warnings for All

Armenia has taken a major step toward strengthening its national disaster preparedness and climate resilience. Government institutions, international organizations and development partners gathered for the EW4All National Roadmap Validation Workshop

World Meteorological Organization (WMO)
Training event
-
Online
The workshop will introduce concepts, frameworks, practical approaches to strengthen inclusive DRR, climate resilience, and climate action through effective governance, risk-informed planning, private sector engagement, and technology-enabled solutions.
Training event
Online
Online
This online training examines the Flint Water Crisis as a case study in technological and infrastructure-related disaster risk in public water systems.
The saline wells of coastal Puri, India, experiencing water contamination and bankruptcy
Update
Zambia: Strengthening cholera control through simulation training

Organising preparedness training for water utilities in relation to cholera is a critical step in preventing and reducing outbreaks. It is essential because cholera is waterborne.

Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO)
A group of people are stood in line for a group photo. They are outside standing on asphalt. There are palm trees behind them and a long, curved building in the background of the photo on the right-hand side
Update
Strengthening disaster data dystems in the Indian Ocean

Seychelles hosted a regional peer learning workshop from 18 to 20 January 2026 on building methodological foundations for national disaster tracking systems powered by DELTA-Resilience. Participants from Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar attended.

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Africa
Building climate-resilient social care: Guidance for practitioners thumbnail
Documents and publications

This document provides practical guidance for assessing and addressing climate-related risks such as heat, flooding, and extreme weather to ensure continuity of social care service.

Verture
Training event
Piatra-Neamt
In person
The earthquake exercise, aims to provide information concerning the behaviour that should be adopted during an earthquake and immediately after its occurrence.
Group of local authorities and community members standing in a burnt landscape after a bushfire in Wompou, Guidimakha, Mauritania.
National (or local) - Mauritania
New
This commitment strengthens climate and disaster resilience in Guidimakha, Mauritania through community-led Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and eco-DRR, addressing floods, drought, heatwaves and wildfires, with a replication and learning window for Nouakchott’s coastal/littoral resilience (2026–2028).
Update
First workshop of the DARE project held in Gelsenkirchen, Germany

Prepared International (PPI) participated in the first workshop of DARE (Deployment and Engagement of Resources and Citizens for European Emergency Response) in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Prepared International (PPI)
Investment protocol for operationalizing supply system resilience strategies for climate and disaster risks thumbnail
Documents and publications

This report outlines an investment protocol designed to help companies operationalise shared climate and disaster risk resilience strategies across interconnected supply systems.

University of Waterloo
UNDRR Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies (ARISE)
Trade Facilitation Office
Indigenous Yika rangers start a controlled burning operation using drip torches in Australia
Research briefs
USA: How wildfires can be leveraged to increase forest resilience

Research from The Nature Conservancy, the University of California, Berkeley and the USDA Forest Service details how wildfires could be leveraged to increase forest resilience to future high-severity fires across the Western United States.

Nature Conservancy, the
Update
IOC strengthens public safety with NEAMWave26 tsunami exercise

This exercise will take place from 3 to 24 March 2026, bringing together scientific institutions, national authorities and civil protection partners to strengthen early warning systems and emergency response capacities.

Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (UNESCO)
A Cyclone Preparedness Programme (CPP) volunteer, during an early warning drill in Chila village, Bangladesh
Update
Bangladesh: Strengthening gender-responsive climate adaptation

As climate impacts intensify across Bangladesh, adaptation efforts must address not only infrastructure and ecosystem-related risks but also the social structures that shape vulnerability and resilience.

Global Center on Adaptation
Update
New online library on urban heat

The Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance, an IFRC partner organization, has posted an Urban Heat Library mini-site as a “collaborative space dedicated to sharing knowledge, tools, and best practices related to urban heat".

International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC)