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'Floods, droughts, hurricanes and other natural events are to be expected. They are part of the history of every country. Better urban, suburban and agricultural planning will make them less punishing' said Dr. Bill Patzert of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Oceanography group in an interview...

Global reinsurance giant Swiss Re has urged the country's governments to cover the rising damages bill using insurance instruments such as 'catastrophe bonds' rather than one-off disaster levies, reports Reuters. 'We would like to see some form of insurance from government rather than a levy after the event,' said Mark Senkevics, head of Swiss Re in Australia and New Zealand...

With earthquakes, heat waves, floods and snowstorms affecting 208 million people, killing nearly 300,000, and costing $110 billion in losses last year alone, the General Assembly debated mitigation steps such as building safer schools, hospitals and cities to reduce the terrible toll...

Governments in Asia and the Pacific must prepare for the possibility of millions of people fleeing their homes as a result of changing weather patterns or face dealing with the humanitarian crises associated with such large-scale migration, says a draft report by the Asian Development Bank released this week, reports Thin Lei Win for Reuters AlertNet...

'River flooding is the most frequent natural hazard we face and we can't afford to be complacent about it. We need a closely coordinated, multi-faceted approach to managing and reducing this risk,' said Stuart Kneebone, chairman of the Environment Waikato's river and catchment services committee yesterday...

The Queensland Government has stated that the water released from Wivenhoe Dam prior to the flooding in Brisbane last month may not have helped the situation. 'Some of the work that's already been done shows that if you reduce Wivenhoe Dam by certain amounts, modelled against the flooding event we saw last month, it wouldn't have had a noticeable impact' said Natural Resources Minister Stephen Robertson...

'We were extremely lucky that it's come through between the two major regional centres here, Cairns and Townsville' said cyclone expert Jonathan Nott in an interview with ABC. 'Mitigation strategies haven't improved in all that time [since cyclone Larry]. We're still not thinking seriously enough about where people should live and how to keep them safe and how to keep them out of the road of danger'...

North-eastern Australia suffered no casualties after Cyclone Yasi, which UNISDR says was due to a high level of risk awareness and planning, rather than a “miracle,” as some call it. Tropical Cyclone Yasi crossed the Australian mainland at midnight local time on Wednesday, but despite its category-5 strength, there were no reports of serious injuries or fatalities, according to a situation update from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.