Kyrgyzstan’s journey to a disaster damage and loss assessment system: Institutionalizing the national methodology for damage and loss assessment (DLA) in agriculture and eDLA software
As countries work to modernize their disaster data governance systems, sector-driven initiatives are proving essential in building the foundations of robust national disaster databases. In Kyrgyzstan, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), working closely with national authorities, has demonstrated how a sectoral approach can evolve into a nationally recognized methodology and digital system for tracking disaster damage and loss. This experience offers an important example of progress encouraged through UNDRR’s global initiatives, including the DELTA Resilience rollout and the Global Disaster-Related Statistics Framework (GDRSF). By improving the way agricultural damage and loss data are collected, standardized, and used, the Kyrgyzstan experience illustrates how sectoral advances can lay the groundwork for stronger, risk-informed decision-making across government.
Kyrgyzstan is highly exposed to a range of natural hazards, including floods, droughts, landslides, mudflows, and frost events that frequently affect agriculture, forestry, and fisheries. For many years, the country lacked a unified method for collecting and reporting agricultural damage and loss data. Information was dispersed across several ministries and subnational entities, inconsistently recorded, underreported, and often stored on paper. This fragmentation limited the government’s capacity to evaluate sectoral impacts, plan recovery and reconstruction measures, and comply with the reporting requirements of the Sendai Framework. Recognizing the need for a coherent national system, in 2022-2023, together with the Centre for Emergency Situations and Disaster Risk Reduction (CESDRR), FAO supported the Ministry of Emergency Situations of the Kyrgyz Republic (MES) to design a comprehensive methodology for disaster damage and loss assessment (DLA) for agriculture. This collaboration resulted in the development of a standardized, nationally approved methodology that establishes common definitions, approaches, and formulas for assessing the impacts of disasters on crops, livestock, forestry, and fisheries. The methodology provides clarity on what should be measured, shows examples of calculations, and what data is needed to perform the assessment. The official adoption of the developed “Methodological Guideline for damage and loss assessment related to disasters/emergencies in agriculture, forestry and fisheries” by a joint order of the MES and the Ministry of Agriculture (signed on 27 September 2023) gave it the institutional weight needed to guide assessments nationwide. Considering the methodology aligns with international disaster data standards, it also enabled Kyrgyzstan to strengthen its reporting under global frameworks, particularly the Sendai Framework Monitoring.
Building on this foundation, since 2024, FAO has been supporting national authorities, particularly the MES, in customizing to the national context an online software aimed at facilitating the application of the adopted Kyrgyz DLA methodology (eDLA). This web-based tool is designed to facilitate field data collection, standardized data entry, validation, analysis, and reporting. The software enables district-level officials to record agriculture-related damage and loss data directly, reducing delays in reporting and ensuring that information is stored in a centralized and secure system hosted by the Crisis Management Centre of the MES. The tool was successfully tested in 2024 through a tabletop simulation at the central level that confirmed its value in enabling the country to systematically collect, process, and store disaster data from extreme events. The ongoing phase of the project (2025-2026) aims to extend the work to local-level (district and oblast) authorities, who are the key actors in real-time disaster data collection and processing and envisions a field pilot testing of the tool in selected districts and a training-of-trainers programme on the application of both the DLA methodology and the eDLA software to ensure local ownership, institutional memory, and sustainable use of the tool.
As Kyrgyzstan serves as a pilot country for the institutionalization of eDLA software in the region, the expansion of activities at the sub-national level will reinforce project results and long-term commitments by ensuring that local authorities are equipped, engaged, and integrated into a unified disaster data system, thereby anchoring the methodology within the country’s disaster risk management structure.
The development of a unified DLA methodology in agriculture and the digital tool has marked significant progress in strengthening Kyrgyzstan’s data governance ecosystem. Once the eDLA software is fully rolled out at a district level, authorities will be able to rely on a consistent, digitized system for documenting agricultural disaster impacts across the entire country. This transition strengthens the reliability of national statistics, improves transparency in assessment processes, and enhances coordination between institutions responsible for disaster management and agricultural development. It also allows the government to compare datasets across time, identify emerging trends, understand recurrent hazards, and make more informed decisions on resource allocation, resilience investments, and emergency responses.
Importantly, Kyrgyzstan’s progress also creates strong foundations for future integration within the DELTA Resilience system. As the country advances toward a more comprehensive, multi-hazard and multi-sector hazardous events and disaster losses and damages tracking system, the eDLA software can provide a mature sectoral dataset that can be linked with hazardous-event records, exposure information, and risk layers. Integrating agricultural damage and loss records with hazardous-event parameters - such as event type, timing, intensity, and geographic footprint - would allow authorities to better understand how specific hazards translate into sectoral impacts, improve attribution of losses, and enable more consistent comparison across regions and events. Through DELTA Resilience, agricultural data could become part of a broader national data ecosystem where sectoral methodologies, common hazard taxonomies, and multi-sectoral impact and pre-disaster reference data on vulnerability, exposure, and reference conditions contribute to a unified picture of disaster impacts.
Kyrgyzstan’s progress also carries important implications for global reporting and planning. By adopting standardized procedures, the country is better positioned to contribute accurate and comparable data to the Sendai Framework monitoring process, particularly for Targets A through D. Reliable damage and loss data further support national planning related to poverty reduction, food security, climate resilience, and sustainable development. Considering that agriculture is a major source of livelihoods for rural communities, improved loss accounting helps clarify the real economic and social impacts of disasters, reinforcing the need for targeted policies and resilience-building investments. As data collection expands and becomes more disaggregated, the system can also support applications such as agricultural insurance schemes, anticipatory action protocols, and sector-specific resilience programming - which could be further strengthened through their linkage with hazardous-event data in DELTA Resilience.
This case demonstrates how a sector-specific intervention, when grounded in national ownership and supported by technical expertise, can evolve into a robust and interoperable component of a national disaster data system. The unified DLA methodology and eDLA software closely align with the principles of the Global Disaster-related Statistics Framework (G-DRSF), particularly around consistent definitions, institutional clarity, and integration of sectoral datasets. Their progressive alignment with DELTA Resilience reflects a pathway towards a future national system in which sectoral methodologies are interoperable, hazardous-event and impact data are systematically linked, and governments benefit from a more comprehensive, comparable, and actionable understanding of disaster impacts.
FAO’s leadership in designing the methodology and developing the eDLA software, together with the commitment of national authorities, offers a replicable model for other countries in Central Asia and beyond. It demonstrates how strengthening agricultural loss accounting contributes not only to improved disaster response but also to better governance, a more coherent national data ecosystem, and more effective integration of sectoral data into national disaster databases. In doing so, Kyrgyzstan provides a compelling example of how sector-led innovation can feed into DELTA Resilience-type disaster tracking systems and how investments in data systems can advance both national priorities and global resilience agendas.
References:
- Inter-Agency and Expert Group on Disaster-Related Statistics (IAEG-DRS). (2026). Global disaster-related statistics framework (G-DRSF). United Nations Statistics Division. https://unstats.un.org/UNSDWebsite/statcom/session_57/documents/BG-4c-G-DRSF-E.pdf
https://www.undrr.org/building-risk-knowledge/framework-disaster-statistics
- Conforti, P., Markova, G., & Tochkov, D. (2020). FAO’s methodology for damage and loss assessment in agriculture. FAO Statistics Working Paper 19-17. Rome. https://doi.org/10.4060/ca6990en. https://openknowledge.fao.org/items/5bc863c3-618d-48c8-92ce-26842444855f
Other links:
- FAO helps Kyrgyzstan to implement an electronic system for assessment of damages and losses in the agricultural sector - https://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/news-archive/detail-news/fr/c/1709359/.
- The Center jointly with FAO conducted a training on the use of damage and loss assessment tool in the agricultural sector of the Kyrgyz Republic - https://cesdrr.org/en/the-center-jointly-with-fao-conducted-a-training-on-the-use-of-damage-and-loss-assessment-tool-in-the-agricultural-sector-of-the-kyrgyz-republic.
- Workshop: Implementation of methodology for assessment of damages and losses in the Kyrgyz agricultural sector using the e-DLA tool - https://www.fao.org/europe/events/detail/workshop--implementation-of-methodology-for-assessment-of-damages-and-losses-in-the-kyrgyz-agricultural-sector-using-the-e-dla-tool/en.
- Working visit to the Center of the FAO representative in the Kyrgyz Republic - https://cesdrr.org/en/working-visit-to-the-center-of-the-fao-representative-in-the-kyrgyz-republic.
- In Kyrgyzstan, an electronic system for assessing damage and losses in agriculture has been successfully tested - https://www.fao.org/countryprofiles/news-archive/detail-news/en/c/1733154/.
- FAO launches project to digitalize agricultural damage assessment in Kyrgyzstan - https://www.fao.org/kyrgyzstan/news/detail/fao-launches-project-to-digitalize-agricultural-damage-assessment-in-kyrgyzstan/en.