Knowledge Base highlights and editors' picks

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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.

Research briefs

27 October 2023

World-first warning system can help predict extreme fires

A new warning system developed by a UNSW Canberra researcher could help firefighters better understand the severity of upcoming fire seasons.

University of New South Wales

Strong waves overrun the seawall in Havana, Cuba, resulting in heavy flooding in the city

Update

30 October 2023

Climate adaptation projects sometimes exacerbate the problems they try to solve – a new tool hopes to correct that

Preliminary findings from the analysis of 79 adaptation projects show that managed retreat, structural flood protection and climate-resilient development projects are most at risk of maladaptation.

Conversation Media Group, the

Cover and source: Centre for Disaster Protection

Documents and publications

27 October 2023

Measuring the crisis protection gap: Synthesis report

This report synthesises research exploring the feasibility of producing quantitative estimates of the costs of crisis protection across a variety of geographies and crisis types.

Documents and publications

27 October 2023

Small Island Developing States under threat by rising seas even in a 1.5 °C warming world

This study carries out an assessment of future food risk from slow-onset sea-level rise and episodic sea-level extremes along the coastlines of Small Island Developing States worldwide.

Hurricane Irma traverses the Eastern Caribbean in this satellite view

Research briefs

26 October 2023

Scientists find two ways that hurricanes rapidly intensify

New study may help forecasters better predict dangerous storms.

National Center for Atmospheric Research

Research briefs

26 October 2023

How changes in the Arctic shape global weather patterns

Weather instabilities in the Arctic and changes in air temperature in distant regions such as California and Southwest China are linked, an international team of researchers reveals.

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research

A man treks the banks of a lake high up Nepal near Mt. Everest

Update

25 October 2023

New UN University report warns about risk tipping points with irreversible impacts on people and planet

Drastic changes are approaching if risks to our fundamental socioecological systems are not addressed.

United Nations University (UNU)

Women in burqas in Kabul walking with a child

Update

25 October 2023

Trapped in their homes: Women and girls comprise majority of earthquake casualties in Afghanistan

In the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Herat, the death toll and injuries have been higher among women and girls. Women represented 58 per cent of adults killed, 60 percent of those injured, and 61 per cent of those missing as of 19 October.

United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women)

Scene of destruction after the second passage of Cyclone Freddy in Zambézia province, Mozambique

Update

25 October 2023

Analysis: Africa’s extreme weather has killed at least 15,000 people in 2023

In an extraordinary year for the Earth’s climate – which is now virtually certain to be hottest on record – global warming has combined with the El Niño weather phenomenon and other factors to cause “crazy” weather across the globe, including in Africa.

Carbon Brief

Traffic grows heavy on a Mumbai road after a landslide blocks lanes

Update

24 October 2023

Himalayan communities are under siege from landslides – and climate change is worsening the crisis

As climate change is making these cloudbursts and other forms of heavy rainfall more intense and more frequent in the Himalayan foothills, the hilly slopes are becoming saturated more frequently, and thus unstable.

Conversation Media Group, the