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Preparedness

The knowledge and capacities developed by governments, response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to and recover from the impacts of likely, imminent or current disasters.

Preparedness action is carried out within the context of disaster risk management and aims to build the capacities needed to efficiently manage all types of emergencies.

This theme covers aspects related to preparedness, contingency planning, disaster response plans, prevention, anticipatory action.

What’s the difference between disaster risk reduction (DRR) and disaster risk management (DRM)?

Latest Preparedness additions in the Knowledge Base

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Families are preparing fuel and energy to prepare for incoming disaster
Update
New report from the Anticipation Hub shows that anticipatory action reached 9.6 million people in 2025

The Anticipation Hub’s fourth annual overview of anticipatory action shows that this approach continued to expand in 2025, reaching 9.6 million people ahead of forecast hazards during the year.

Anticipation Hub
Burial team during the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone, 2015
Update
Why Africa – and the world – remain dangerously unprepared for the next pandemic

As the news spread about the outbreak of Ebola in mid-May 2026, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report about pandemics. The title was: A World on the Edge: Priorities for a Pandemic-Resilient Future.

Conversation Media Group, the
Update
Research shows that prescribed fire, other fuels treatments net major savings

It’s well-established that prescribed fire and other fuel-reduction treatments can create significant ecological benefits and reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire.

NPR
Update
Spain to launch largest-ever forest fire campaign after record losses

Spain is one of the southern European countries on the front line of climate change as higher average temperatures stoke heatwaves, droughts and forest fires.

The Local Spain
A thermometer showing high temperatures. A city is blurred in the background.
Update
How London, Paris and New York coped in the heatwaves of the past

Paris, London and New York are more often associated with culture, finance and history than with dangerous heat. Yet each summer all three are increasingly exposed to extreme temperatures they were never designed to withstand.

Conversation Media Group, the
Update
As Ebola resurfaces in DR Congo, so do critical questions about how to respond

A large-scale response has begun to an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that went undetected for up to two months and has already become one of the largest on record, with 671 suspected cases and 160 suspected deaths.

The New Humanitarian
Update
Wildfire season arrives again: Is Europe ready this time?

Early fires in the Netherlands and Czechia offered a first test of EU emergency coordination

EurActiv Network
Disaster risk planning in an evolving risk landscape: Barriers and enablers in the integration of land use and preparedness actors thumbnail
Documents and publications
Disaster risk planning in an evolving risk landscape: Barriers and enablers in the integration of land use and preparedness actors

This study explored barriers and enablers in collaborative planning within an evolving risk landscape. In this context, friction-free, bidirectional feedback between the preventive and the reactive parts of the DRM system-of-systems is essential.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction (Elsevier)
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