Disaster risk reduction and resilience

The first principle

Disaster risk is the product of a hazard, the people and assets exposed to it, and how vulnerable they are, set against their capacity to cope. Nobody can stop a cyclone, but every other term in that product can be changed before the cyclone arrives, which is why a rupee spent on reducing risk saves several rupees of relief. Resilience is the result: the ability of a household, a city or an economy to absorb a shock, keep working and recover quickly into a safer state than before.

The core

Early warning systems

• An early warning is a chain, not a forecast. The United Nations initiative Early Warnings for All, launched in 2022 to cover every person on Earth by 2027, describes four links: knowing the risk, detecting and forecasting the hazard, communicating the warning, and being prepared to act on it.
• India's forecasters are specialised. The India Meteorological Department (IMD) warns of cyclones, heavy rain and heat with colour codes, the Central Water Commission (CWC) forecasts river floods, the Indian National Centre for Ocean Information Services (INCOIS) runs the tsunami warning service, and the Geological Survey of India (GSI) works on landslide forecasting.
• SACHET carries the warning to the phone. It is the National Disaster Management Authority's (NDMA) alert platform built by the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) on the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP), an international message format that lets one authorised alert travel at once over SMS, television, radio, coastal sirens and satellite receivers. It works in all 36 States and Union Territories and, according to the Press Information Bureau (PIB), had sent over 134 billion geotargeted SMS alerts in more than 19 languages by 2026. A cell broadcast system built by C-DOT was rolled out nationally from May 2026; it reaches every phone in an area at the same moment, which matters for sudden hazards such as tsunamis, earthquakes and gas leaks.

Risk transfer and insurance

• Insurance moves the cost of a rare, large loss from a household or a government budget to a wider pool, so that recovery money arrives without waiting for a relief package.
• Parametric insurance pays on a measured trigger, such as rainfall above a threshold or wind speed above a limit, rather than on an assessed loss, so it pays within days and needs no loss adjuster. In August 2024 Nagaland signed a three year agreement with SBI General Insurance and, by its own account, became the first Indian State to buy such a cover, against extreme weather events such as floods and landslides.
• The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), launched in 2016, is the main crop insurance scheme, in which farmers pay 2 per cent of the sum insured for kharif, 1.5 per cent for rabi and 5 per cent for commercial and horticultural crops.

Resilient infrastructure

• Infrastructure is where losses multiply, because a failed bridge, power line or hospital cuts off far more people than it shelters. Resilient infrastructure follows hazard codes of the Bureau of Indian Standards, avoids the riskiest sites and is designed to fail safely and be repaired quickly.
• The Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI), announced by India at the United Nations Climate Action Summit in September 2019, is a partnership of governments, United Nations agencies, banks and firms with its secretariat in New Delhi. It now has 59 member countries and 13 partner organisations, holds international organisation status in India, and runs Infrastructure for Resilient Island States (IRIS), launched at the Glasgow climate conference in 2021. The global frameworks note covers CDRI's place in the Sendai Framework.

Communities, schools and hospitals

• Neighbours are the first responders, since outside teams take hours or days to arrive. NDMA's National Guidelines on Community Based Disaster Risk Reduction (2024) ask that villages and wards map their own risks and plan their own response.
• Aapda Mitra began in May 2016 as a pilot training 200 volunteers in each of 30 flood prone districts across 25 States, and was scaled up to about one lakh volunteers in 350 multi hazard districts, each given two weeks of training, an emergency responder kit and insurance cover. The Yuva Aapda Mitra Scheme of 2024 extends this to more than 2.37 lakh young people from the National Cadet Corps, National Service Scheme, Nehru Yuva Kendra Sangathan and Bharat Scouts and Guides in 315 districts, at a cost of over Rs 470 crore.
• Schools and hospitals must stand when others fall. NDMA's School Safety Policy Guidelines (2016) ask for safe buildings, drills and a school disaster plan, while its Hospital Safety Guidelines (2016) cover structural safety, non structural safety (equipment, oxygen, fire) and functional safety, so that a hospital keeps working on the day it is most needed.

Dimensions

• Economic. Losses fall hardest on informal workers, small farmers and small firms with no savings or insurance, so one disaster can push a family into poverty for years.
• Social. Women, children, older people and persons with disabilities face higher risk, which is why NDMA issued Guidelines on Disability Inclusive Disaster Risk Reduction in 2019.
• Environmental. Healthy ecosystems are cheap defences: a study of Kendrapara district in Odisha after the 1999 super cyclone found fewer deaths in villages behind wider mangrove belts. Climate change is raising the frequency of extreme heat and rain, which the note on climate change impacts on India covers.
• Technological. Satellites map floods and damage, as the geospatial technology note explains; drones survey sites that rescuers cannot reach; and artificial intelligence helps turn forecasts into impact based warnings that say what a storm will do, not only how strong it is.
• Media. The media can carry a warning to millions in minutes and keep authorities accountable, but rumours spread as fast, and section 54 of the Disaster Management Act 2005 punishes anyone who makes a false alarm or warning that causes panic with up to one year in prison or a fine.

In practice

• Mainstreaming risk reduction in development. Sections 36 and 37 of the Disaster Management Act require every ministry to prepare a disaster management plan and build prevention and mitigation into its own projects. The Fifteenth Finance Commission (2021-26) turned this into money: it set up national and State disaster risk management funds and kept 20 per cent of each for mitigation, leaving 80 per cent for response, relief, recovery and preparedness.
• The Prime Minister's Ten Point Agenda, announced at the Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) in New Delhi in November 2016, asks that all development sectors imbibe disaster risk management, that risk coverage reach everyone from poor households to nations, that women lead, that risk be mapped globally, that technology be used, that universities work on disasters, that social media and mobile technology be used, that local capacity be built, that every disaster be used as a chance to learn, and that international response be more coordinated.
• Odisha, from 1999 to 2013. The super cyclone of October 1999 killed about 10,000 people, and the State responded with the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority, the first in India, cyclone shelters along the coast and trained shelter committees. When Cyclone Phailin struck in October 2013, close to a million people were moved in time and fewer than 40 died, according to the World Bank, because warning, shelters and practised communities worked together.
• Build back better after Bhuj, 2001. After the earthquake of 26 January 2001 Gujarat chose owner driven reconstruction with earthquake resistant designs, created the Gujarat State Disaster Management Authority and passed the Gujarat State Disaster Management Act 2003, the first such law of a State. The Sendai Framework later made build back better its fourth priority, and post disaster needs assessments, as Kerala used after the floods of 2018 and the Wayanad landslide of 2024, now cost recovery in this way.
• Cost benefit evidence. The Global Commission on Adaptation reported in 2019 that 24 hours' warning of a storm or heat wave can cut the damage by 30 per cent, and that investing 1.8 trillion dollars in adaptation between 2020 and 2030 could yield 7.1 trillion dollars in benefits.

Issues and way forward

• The last mile still fails. Warnings reach phones, but people without phones, those who do not read the language and those with nowhere safe to go are left out, so alerts must be paired with sirens, local volunteers and shelters, and tested in drills.
• Warning fatigue. Alerts that overstate risk teach people to ignore the next one, so impact based forecasting, which says what a hazard will do in each district, should cover all major hazards.
• Insurance reaches few. Most household, small business and public assets in India are uninsured, so the State has to pay for recovery from its budget; more State level parametric covers, pooled across States, and simple products for homes and shops would spread the burden.
• Mitigation money needs projects. Relief can be spent as soon as a disaster strikes, but mitigation funds need designed projects and technical staff that many States lack, so NDMA and State authorities need engineering cells that can prepare and appraise them.
• Recovery is slow and rebuilds old risk. Houses are often rebuilt on the same flood plain with the same weak design, so recovery plans must include land use change and code compliance.

Common confusions

• Disaster risk reduction and disaster management. Disaster management covers the whole cycle, including response, while disaster risk reduction is the part that acts before the event to lower hazard exposure and vulnerability.
• Parametric and indemnity insurance. Indemnity insurance pays for the loss actually assessed, slowly but exactly, while parametric insurance pays a fixed amount when a measured index crosses a trigger, quickly but with basis risk.
• Early warning and forecast. A forecast predicts the hazard, while an early warning system also includes knowing who is at risk, delivering the message and making sure people act on it.
• Resilience and resistance. Resistance means withstanding a shock without damage, while resilience accepts some damage but ensures quick recovery, which is often cheaper and more realistic.

For the exam

• Keyword bank: disaster risk reduction, resilience, end to end early warning, last mile connectivity, Common Alerting Protocol, SACHET, cell broadcast, parametric insurance, basis risk, risk layering, resilient infrastructure, CDRI, Aapda Mitra, build back better, mainstreaming disaster risk reduction.
• Previous year questions: Practise the previous year questions on this topic →
• Use in an answer:
  • Introduction with data: When Cyclone Phailin struck Odisha in 2013, close to a million people were evacuated and fewer than 40 died, against about 10,000 deaths in the super cyclone of 1999.
  • Introduction with a source: The Sendai Framework 2015 to 2030 asks countries to shift from managing disasters to managing risk, and makes "build back better" its fourth priority.
  • Conclusion: Resilience is built in ordinary years, through codes, warnings, insurance and trained communities, so the real test of a disaster system is how little relief it needs.
  • Conclusion: India has shown with cyclones that deaths can be brought close to zero; the next step is to cut economic losses, which needs resilient infrastructure and wide risk insurance.