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Disaster Risk Management and Climate Adaptation

I grew up in a small town in India-Patna-beside one of the mightiest river systems in the world, the Ganges. It is hard to describe the sacred place that the river has in Indian daily life. From...

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Disaster Risk Management and Climate Adaptation (part 2)

Part 2 of 2.I work on disaster risk management in East Asia and the Pacific. This is a region which faces increased disaster risk associated with climatic hazards, particularly from rising sea-levels,...

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New tools, data and initiatives coming out of the UNISDR Global Platform for...

I spent last week at the 2009 UNISDR Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva. The Global Platform, attended this year by some 1,800 participants from more than 300 Governments and...

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Philippines flooding: Responding to a disaster in real time

Flood affected areas in Metro Manila Region and Rizal Province, Philippines. Hi-res version. Canadian Space Agency Image processing, map created 29/09/2009 by UNITAR/UNOSAT. Saturday morning, September...

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Haiti earthquake: Out of great disasters comes great opportunity

A collapsed building in Port-au-Prince. Photo by IFRC/Eric Quintero under a Creative Commons license.The scale and magnitude of the earthquake in Haiti has shocked, saddened and horrified us all. But...

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Saving lives one building at a time: Post-disaster urban search and rescue in...

We have all probably heard the old adage “Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do”. Recent temblors in Haiti and earlier in China have tragically demonstrated the truth of this. Out-of-date...

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Time to wake up to disaster prevention, Asia

A power substation in Yingxhou, Sichuan Province was almost totally destroyed in the magnitude 7.9 Sichuan-Wenchuan earthquake in 2008.The statistics are startling. 75% of global flood mortality risk...

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What Coke teaches us about disasters (and development)

Photo courtesy of chidanands through a Creative Commons license.Coke sells 1.6 billion servings per day. You can find Coke in the remotest, poorest and most unlikely parts of the planet. I recently...

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The earthquake that changed the world forever

The Japanese phrase “Shikata ga nai (仕方がない)  -loosely translated as "it can't be helped" -captures the essence of the resilience and sense of duty towards one’s community that the Japanese people...

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Embracing the Certainty of Uncertainty

Many extremely smart people have famously made predictions that turned out to be really wrong. Consider this: "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of...

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Three key lessons from the 2004 Tsunami

I began my professional career as a sub-district and district level administrator in India-a position that makes one responsible for pretty much everything- from making sure the water comes out of the...

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Singapore: The Pelé of urban design

Photo: Nicolas Lannuzel/Flickr Who is the best soccer player of all time? A Google search will offer this name: Edson Arantes do Nascimento, popularly known as Pelé. Kicking off in 1958 as a 17 year...

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World Cities Summit – A festival of ideas for an urban world

Photo courtesy of Michaela Loheit through a Creative Commons license. Here is a pop quiz – where in the world, over the course of five days, can you talk to the architects of the remarkable turnaround...

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China, economic reform and the role of foreign experts

Group photos of the participants of the 1985 Bashan river cruise conference Photo: copyright © / World Bank I am a policy wonk. I have spent my entire professional career (first in the Government of...

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“But what about Singapore?” Lessons from the best public housing program in...

Also available in: Mongolian | Chinese   As we approach the 9th World Urban Forum in Kuala Lumpur next week, one of the essential challenges in implementing the New Urban Agenda that governments are...

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Top 7 disruptive technologies for cities

Imagine you were working in development and poverty reduction in the early 1990s (I was!). Only one website existed in all the world in August 1991 (today there are over 1.5 billion). Mobile phones...

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Haiti earthquake: Out of great disasters comes great opportunity

A collapsed building in Port-au-Prince. Photo by IFRC/Eric Quintero under a Creative Commons license.

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Saving lives one building at a time: Post-disaster urban search and rescue in...

We have all probably heard the old adage “Earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do”. Recent temblors in Haiti and earlier in China have tragically demonstrated the truth of this. Out-of-date...

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Can Singapore become a role model for quickly-growing cities?

About this series More blog posts In the 1960s, Singapore was struggling with limited resources, a small domestic market, and high unemployment. Living standards were low, with most residents living in...

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Cities for the people

Overcrowded, dirty, and disorderly cities undermine residents’ health as much as their happiness. With urbanization occurring at an unprecedented rate, there is an urgent need for careful planning,...

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