25th Disaster Management Institute of Southern Africa conference: Building resilient cities, addressing urban disaster risk

The Annual Conference of the Institute is the biggest Disaster Management Conference in Africa, and routinely attracts more than 300 delegates. The Institute is recognized as the mouthpiece of the Disaster Management profession in Southern Africa and is recognized by the South African Local Government Association (SALGA) as well as the United Nations’ International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN/ISDR).

The conference provides an annual opportunity for a diverse range of stakeholders in disaster risk management from across Africa to gather and share skills, knowledge and experience.

The World Conference on Disaster Reduction, which was held in Kobe, Japan, in 2005, heralded a major review of disasters and disaster reduction efforts. One of its main outcomes was the Hyogo Framework for Action – 2005-2015, with 5 priorities for action.

Since 2006 bi-annual ISDR advocacy campaign themes were determined as per Priority for Action 3 of the HFA (Knowledge: use knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels).

The campaign theme for 2010-2011 is: Urban risk reduction: bui;ding resilient cities, addressing urban disaster risk.
Cities and local governments need to get ready and become resilient to disasters. For the next two years and beyond, the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) will campaign together with its partners for this to happen.

The themes of papers for this year’s Conference should be in line with the ISDR campaign theme:

- abstracts should clearly state the purpose, results and conclusions of the work to be described in the final paper
- Abstracts should be submitted electronically via e-mail to karin@disaster.co.za.