Knowledge Base highlights and editors' picks

Top stories and editors' picks from the most recent additions. Explore the whole Knowledge Base.

Every week the PreventionWeb team of editors selects the latest news and research, reports and publications on disaster risk reduction – here is their selection of the latest must-read content.

Update

1 May 2023

From Cape Town to Santa Cruz: How people helped build water resilience

As cities move to secure their water supplies in the backdrop of extreme droughts, two cities in two continents provide blueprints for solutions.

Water Science Policy

Floods streets in in Dakar, Senegal, 2012

Update

28 April 2023

Five recommendations for integrating equity into benefit-cost analysis for flood risk management

In recent months, EDF held a workshop where experts provided guidance on how the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), a federal agency that works on flood risk management, can integrate equity into their benefit-cost analyses.

Environmental Defense Fund

An Indian farmer processes payments through his mobile phone

Update

28 April 2023

Building community resilience through digital innovations in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is vulnerable to devastating natural hazards which cause loss of life, destruction of homes and infrastructure, and widespread disruption. Digital innovations can facilitate increased resilience across a range of diverse contexts.

Flood Resilience Portal

Research briefs

1 May 2023

Building resilience to the mental health impacts of climate change in rural Australia

Rural communities in Australia face unprecedented drought, fires and floods every few weeks. The mental health impacts of such climate events are numerous, yet little is known about what promotes the resilience of rural communities to these impacts.

University of Sydney

Update

27 April 2023

Moving from response to resilience as external shocks and macro-fiscal imbalances persist in Malawi

Our visit comes at a time when Malawi is recovering from the devastating impacts of Tropical Cyclone Freddy, which led to the tragic loss of many lives, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and destroyed a great deal of the country's infrastructure.

World Bank, the

Environmental disaster or cataclysm with chemical air pollution and abandoned broken buildings. Industrial accident on nuclear power plant with ruins with destroyed. Destruction in city.

Update

27 April 2023

What are overlooked disasters and why we shouldn’t miss them

The impacts of disasters are growing, especially as we continue to face the risks of a changing climate. Increases in loss and damages and even fatalities have risen.

United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS)

Children playing with water in fountain in Harbour drive in downtown San Diego.

Research briefs

28 April 2023

Researchers from ISGlobal and lSHTM call for incorporating heat stress indices into communication of dangerous heat waves

In the summer of 2022, over 20,000 excess deaths across Spain, France, Germany and Great Britain were suggested to have been linked to extremely hot weather. In the context of global warming

ISGlobal

Documents and publications

27 April 2023

Anticipatory action in 2022: A global overview

This report presents the current global scale and impact of anticipatory action. It discusses how the scope of this approach expanded in 2022 – in terms of the hazards to which it is applied, the different triggers in place, and the actions implemented.

Traditional indigenous Maori house roof under the sky

Update

26 April 2023

Endangered Māori construction methods pass modern seismic testing

Recent research conducted by Professor Anthony Hoete has proven that endangered Mātauranga Māori construction techniques can withstand major earthquakes. He plans to use this knowledge to rebuild a historic Bay of Plenty wharenui.

University of Auckland

An illustration of a child carry water through an area affected by drought to their homes in canisters.

Update

27 April 2023

Human-induced climate change increased drought severity in Horn of Africa

Since October 2020 large parts of Eastern Africa have been experiencing extended dry conditions punctuated by short intense rainfall events that often led to flash floods.

World Weather Attribution