disaster risk reduction

Building Resilience: Insights and Preventive Measures from Kuala Lumpur’s Sinkhole event

Navakanesh M Batmanathan October 1, 2024

(Image credit: Nikki Dawson, Pixabay licence)

On August 23, 2024, a tragic event unfolded in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, when an 8-metre-deep sinkhole opened up on Jalan Masjid India, swallowing Vijayalakshmi Gali, a 48-year-old woman visiting from India [1]. The incident has raised serious concerns about public safety and the integrity of urban infrastructure. A sinkhole is a natural depression or hole that occurs in the ground when the surface ...[Read More]

Navigating the Ongoing and Predicted Disaster of Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil): Career and Insights with Expert Prof. Enner

Paulo Hader June 17, 2024

Severe flooding that left the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre, the capital of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, submerged. Photo credit: GEE, Sentinel-2, Script generated by Christhian Santana Cunha

We are honoured to hear from Dr. Enner Alcântara, Professor at the São Paulo State University (UNESP) and leader of the Remote Sensing, Spatial Analysis, Environmental Modelling and Natural Disasters Research Group. His research in remote sensing has played a crucial role in recognising, managing and mitigating the impacts of disasters, bringing out significant contributions. Today, we’ll ex ...[Read More]

New Era of AI: How can foundation models help disaster risk reduction?

Paulo Hader February 5, 2024

Photo credit: Image by Mikhail Nilov from Pexels (Pexels licence)

In recent decades, AI-based methods have increasingly been adopted to tackle various problems in the field of natural hazards. The escalation of climate change has fuelled the complexity of tasks within the field of disaster risk reduction, such as capturing the formation of an extreme event timely to evacuate an area at risk. In this context, with the greater availability of data and computerised ...[Read More]

Is culture the missing link to disaster risk reduction?

Asimina Voskaki September 11, 2023

The City of Kobe, Chuo Ward (photo credit: Asimina Voskaki)

Sophocles, a great tragic writer of Classical Athens, said that “success is dependent on effort”. When it comes to disaster risk reduction, are we doing enough to develop a culture of resilience and how do cultural factors affect people’s willingness to protect themselves and build an effective disaster reduction and reconstruction mechanism? In 1995 (17/01/1995), Kobe, Osaka (Ja ...[Read More]