27 October 2015

Asia-Pacific Disaster Report 2015

Losses and economic damage arephenomenal and rising in Asia and thePacific – building resilience is not achoice, but a collective imperative and keycomponent of sustainable development.

Some areas have high risk exposure butlow coping capacities – small islands, lowlying areas and cities.

Increasing threats from transboundarydisaster risks - tropical cyclones, droughtsor floods.

Asia-Pacific cannot achieve the SDGswithout building resilience to disasters.

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Landcover change of Dhaka city, 2000 - 2014

Building resilience to drought

• Unlike other regions in the world,drought manifests differently inAsia-Pacific and is often forgotten- irregularities in the monsoonseason, reduced snowfall orglacial runoff, or winter droughtslike the dzud.

• Drought exacerbates poverty -more than 1.6 billion peopleaffected by drought since 1970s.

• Land and water constraints andchanging climate patterns willincrease the risk.

• For example: current drought crisis inPapua New Guinea due to El Nino haskilled dozens and affected more than 2.4million people

Drought indexing for Mongolia

ESCAP Drought Mechanism Pilot: a synthesis of indices using ground and space based observations, June 2015

Drought: A forgotten disaster

A forecasting tool to enhance global flood resilience

and humanitarian response.

Flood-FINDER consists of a modelling chain which includes

meteorological, hydrological and hydraulic models that are

accurately linked to enable the production of global early

warnings and forecast inundation scenarios about 3 weeks

in advance.

Partnership between UNITAR\UNOSAT, CIMA Foundation, USGS and

CERN.

Flood-Finder

ActivationProducts

Activation

Products

Products

Capacity

Building

It enable access to data products from the global and regional constellations of EO satellites

RESAP-Harmonization, Collaboration,

Coordination and Capacity Development

RESAP: A Network of Networks for Access

to EO Products

Bridging the Gaps between EO products/services and its down-the-line utilization