Update

75 per cent of critical medical facilities require seismic retrofitting in order to ensure structural safety in the event of a severe earthquake according to a new study - 'Seismic Screening of Critical Medical Facilities in Kingston' carried out by doctoral student Kevin Tankoo...

The need to communicate and share information is strongest at a time of disaster. As social media and mobile phone use has grown, so too has the use of these technologies to signal the onset or aftermath of a disaster. Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and other social media were also used extensively during Haiti to connect people affected by the earthquake with the outside world with reports about the devastation, as well as to ask for help.

'In this study we show that the costs of adaptation to climate change in the industrial and municipal water supply sector are also greater for developing countries than for developed countries, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of GDP,' Philip Ward of the VU University Amsterdam told environmentalresearchweb...

The Government of India has initiated several steps to address adaptation issues raised in the report entitled 'Climate change impacts in drought and flood affected area: case studies in India' relating to climate related risks such as drought and floods, reports the Press Information Bureau of India...

As the UN's Climate Change Conference in the Mexican city of Cancun reaches a critical point, questions on what concrete steps can be taken and by whom to address the many challenges of climate and environment induced-migration will be tackled by IOM and partners of the Climate Change, Environment and Migration Alliance (CCEMA)...

'It’s not the extreme weather that matters for Indonesia, but how prone we are,' said Armi Susandi, an Indonesian meteorological expert attending the climate talks in Cancun, stressing that although Indonesia had not experience extreme weather events such as typhoons and cyclones, 'it doesn’t mean that we’re not affected by them...

'The risk to lives and livelihoods in the fragile Hindu Kush Himalayan region is high and getting higher. Immediate action by the global community on launching long-term adaptation and resilience-building programmes is urgently needed,' said the Deputy Director General of ICIMOD...

The innovative new R4 partnership is based around the idea of managing 4 risks - community risk reduction, productive risk taking, risk transfer and risk reserves. R4 will address the communities most vulnerable to climate variability in Ethiopia and three other countries, starting in 2011...

As governments enter the second week of negotiations at the United Nations climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, UNISDR today signed an agreement with the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) to strengthen collaboration on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.

Tuvalu’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Enele Sopoaga, has urged the climate change Adaptation Fund Board to provide greater capacity building for islands that are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change...