DRR is a high priority for WMO – the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of its 193 Members play a key role in DRM and contribute significantly to DRR during hazardous events. The DRR Activity Area focuses on strengthening the capacities of the NMHSs to support risk assessments, prevention and mitigation, preparedness (through early warning of a wide range of weather-, climate- and water-related hazards), response and humanitarian assistance, recovery, and disaster risk financing and transfer. Through a coordinated approach, and working with its partners, WMO addresses the information needs and requirements of the disaster risk management community in an effective and timely fashion.
Components
Supporting Hazard and Risk Assessments
Supporting preparedness through MHEWS
Early warning systems (EWS) are critical life-saving tools when environmental hazards arise. Effective EWS generate, disseminate and use timely, accurate, actionable and inclusive warning information to enable individuals, communities and organizations to prepare in advance and respond appropriately to a hazard in order to reduce the possibility of harm or loss. Effective people-centred, end-to-end EWS comprise four interrelated elements:
- Risk assessments;
- Hazard analysis and generation of warning messages;
- Dissemination of warnings and communication of associated likelihood and impact information; and,
- Activation of preparedness and response plans and capabilities.
Multi-hazard early warning systems (MHEWS) provide common capacities to prepare for and respond to several hazards, including those occurring simultaneously or cumulatively over time, and for their potential interrelated impacts. As such, MHEWS increase efficiency and consistency of warnings.
Supporting prevention and mitigation
Disaster prevention expresses the concept and intention to completely avoid the adverse impacts of hazards through actions taken, normally, in advance of a potentially disastrous event. Very often complete avoidance of losses is not feasible and efforts turn to mitigation. Meteorological, hydrological and climate information is essential to determine effective risk mitigation measures, for example, in the design of the levels of embankments that protect high-risk flood zones where settlement and economic activities are vulnerable. Structural and non-structural measures can also be taken during or after an event to prevent secondary hazards or their consequences, for example, air, soil or water contamination.
Supporting response, humanitarian assistance and recovery
In the past decade the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), since 1992 the primary mechanism for inter-agency coordination of humanitarian assistance involving the key United Nations (UN) and non-UN humanitarian partners, initiated a number of reforms to improve contingency planning for disasters, using the cluster approach for enhanced coordination among humanitarian agencies at international to national levels. As a result, such agencies have sought to use essential meteorological, hydrological and climatological information in their planning. WMO is coordinating this work within the UN and other humanitarian agencies in order to demonstrate the benefits of weather and climate services when targeted to needs and requirements.
Supporting disaster risk financing and transfer
Disasters affect human life and have profound impacts on local and national economies, sometimes setting back development gains by many years in countries with limited resources. Over the past decades, there has been a persistent increase in the number of disaster events, and hydrometeorological hazards accounting for the lion’s share of them. The DRR Activity Area, therefore, facilitates the development of weather, water and climate services for risk financing, insurance and other financial risk transfer mechanisms in order to cope with residual risks.
