Science and technology

Government officials from Armenia, Cambodia, Gambia, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Mongolia and Republic of Korea arrive in Incheon today for a five-day "Leadership Forum on Mainstreaming Adaptation and Disaster Reduction into Development." Over 30 officials from a variety of backgrounds will examine entry points for introducing disaster risk reduction into economic development.

UNISDR Chief Margareta Wahlstrom spoke to the opening session of this week's extraordinary session of the World Meteorological Congress which is discussing the implementation plan and governance model for the Global Framework for Climate Services.

A UN Report released today at the opening of the Fifth Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk reduction shows that Asia and the Pacific is paying a huge price for extreme weather events which are now impacting negatively on the continent's economic development.

The United Nations, European Commission and national authorities have launched a new project in the Western Balkans and Turkey that will reduce disaster risks and increase resilience to climate change.

The flood-prone coastal city of Beira in Mozambique was named today as the winner of the first RISK Award, a collaboration between UNISDR, the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Munich Re Foundation and the Global Risk Forum, Davos. The €100,000 prize for project implementation is funded through the Munich Re Foundation.

The Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government, Sir John Beddington, recently spoke to UNISDR about how migration triggered by natural hazards is actually taking people into areas of increasing vulnerability.

UNISDR's 2011 Annual Report is now available online and reveals that its two landmark Global Assessment Reports on Disaster Risk Reduction Reports (GAR) for 2009 and 2011, have had over 200,000 chapter downloads over the last three years.

It is truly humbling to see how easily we are fooled by nature but we can also draw hard-won insights from the defeats caused by earthquakes. We used to think that the age and speed of a subducting slab governs its maximum earthquake magnitude but the Great East Japan Earthquake forever puts to rest that view.