Preparedness

Tourism can lead efforts to address extreme heat in Asia and the Pacific through affordable measures, early warning systems, worker protection and climate-resilient planning, with the H.E.A.T. Framework offering a practical approach.

This perspective article introduces a novel approach to pandemic preparedness, advocating for community-participatory intelligence as a central component of health security.

NIDR’s Disaster Preparedness Scorecard 2026 assesses whether Australian governments are progressing on their commitments to Indigenous communities before, during and after disasters.

This document summarises the key messages of an event held at Pre-COP31 in Fiji, in October 2026 by the Government of Samoa (REAP co-chair), the Early Warning for All pillars leads, CREWS, SPREP and REAP.

A tsunami can reach the coast within minutes of an earthquake or other sudden disturbance, sometimes before any official alert. What people already know, and what they do in those first minutes, often decides who survives.

Around the world, governments are calling on their citizens to be prepared for turbulent times.

This commentary examines how tsunami warnings translate into evacuation in Pacific Island and Hawaiʻi coastal communities, recommending multilingual alerts, evacuation route analysis, and community-based preparedness programmes.

This manual provides practical guidance for strengthening community-based flood risk management in Djibouti. It aims to help local communities reduce their vulnerability to flooding and strengthen their capacity to prepare, respond and recover from flood.

Most natural-hazard apps tell people what is happening during an emergency. Fewer than one in five help them prepare beforehand.

This scoping review synthesises recurring dilemmas across design, implementation, evaluation, and future direction of anticipatory action (AA)

This report assesses feasibility of long-range flood outlooks for Australia using co-design with end users and BJP model to quantify and map flood likelihood, finding S2S forecasts enhance preparedness by identifying elevated risk weeks to months ahead.

Better forecasts alone will not deliver early action. Local organizations need actionable risk information, stronger decision-support systems and strengthened capacity to act before disaster strikes.

This report explores how disaster risk reduction policies that center on "home" can overlook marginalized groups, urging inclusive approaches that recognize diverse living situations to ensure effective support and protection for all communities.

Municipalities control levers like land-use planning, permitting and local infrastructure. But the adaptive capacity of municipalities is shaped by fiscal, regulatory and policy frameworks established by federal, provincial or territorial governments.

This summer, Australia could face some of its most extreme bushfire conditions ever, due to the severity of an ever-strengthening El Niño. And for many Australians, memories of catastrophic natural disasters are still painfully fresh.

This study presents the participatory development and piloting processes of a Disaster Preparedness Checklist for health systems, designed to strengthen preparedness for Extreme Weather Events across diverse mountainous European contexts.

After repeated flooding, villagers in southern Malawi planted trees and built a dyke. Their local approach is now helping to protect their homes from rising water – and it is becoming a role model for disaster preparedness throughout the country.

Community wildfire adaption activities may not work as well as hoped because they downplay the importance of local contexts and local input.

Between 2010 and 2025 floods in Indonesia claimed more than 1,700 lives and caused an estimated USD 5.8 billion in losses. ADB-backed forecasting systems now warn communities up to nine hours ahead, alongside livelihood support for affected households.

Experts say that without major upgrades to flood defenses, the city will fall deeper into an annual pattern of chaos and paralysis as climate change takes hold.

In the aftermath of a disaster, affected areas are trapped in a severe information vacuum. When roads are damaged and communications fail, entering the disaster zone and conducting onsite surveys doesn't give an tell what help is necessary and where.

This paper reviews 35 studies on public interpretations of institutional presence in flood-prone areas, finding that perceptions of risk, trust, and preparedness are shaped by how communities experience flood management and governance visibility.

This survey assesses disaster preparedness among Houston-area households, finding most residents feel somewhat prepared but with disparities by income and location. Insights aim to guide leaders in addressing gaps and promoting equitable resilience.

A roving crew installs cameras on California’s highest, craggiest ridgelines to catch wildfires early. Since 2023 artificial intelligence has scanned the network’s footage, and it now spots 51 per cent of the state’s wildfires first.

A survey by IRES for the Romanian insurers’ association UNSAR finds that 88 per cent of Romanians say they know how to react in an earthquake, but only 44 per cent have agreed a family plan and 40 per cent keep a first-aid kit.

The Indonesian government is working with Japan to broadcast earthquake early warnings through mosque loudspeakers, with trials planned in Jakarta and other regions by 2030 before nationwide rollout.

Federal agencies in the United States already use drones to map wildfires and detect hotspots. The Forest Service is now testing ground robots, and researchers are training machine-learning models on drone imagery to predict how fast a fire will spread.

WMO’s Global Seasonal Climate Update forecasts the Niño 3.4 anomaly reaching about +3.7°C in October–December, the highest since observations began, with a near-100 per cent likelihood that El Niño persists through February 2027.

Firefighter and researcher Marc Castellnou sends weather balloons into towering wildfire plumes to measure temperature, wind and humidity, opening a new way to anticipate when a fire turns extreme – and why some keep burning fiercely at night.

Municipalities can prevent system failures through redundancy – intentional duplication of critical functions that increases reliability – and keep mission-critical communications functioning so public safety professionals can serve the community.

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.

On International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, SRSG Kamal Kishore reflects on how everyday decisions about our homes shape disaster risk, how public policy can expand people’s capacity to act, and why recovery works best when households shape it.

When policy, finance and implementation work together to protect where people live, resilience takes root – strengthening communities today and expanding opportunity for generations to come.

When disasters are imminent, timely warnings can be the difference between life and death. However, warnings are only effective when they are received, understood, and acted on.

This Disaster Management Reference Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of Tonga’s disaster risk environment, institutional structures, and operational mechanisms.