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Introduction

The foundation for DRM is understanding the hazards, and the exposure and vulnerability of people and assets to those hazards. By quantifying the risks and anticipating the potential impacts of hazards, governments, communities, and individuals can make informed prevention decisions. Such information can be used to set priorities for development and adaptation strategies, sector plans, programs, projects, and budgets. —World Bank, The Sendai Report: Managing Disaster Risks for a Resilient Future (2012)

Economic losses from disasters triggered by natural events are rising—from $50 billion each year in the 1980s, to just under $200 billion each year in the last decade (World Bank and GFDRR 2013). In addition, the economic losses sustained by lower- and middleincome countries alone over the last 30 years are equivalent to a third of all development assistance in the same time period, offsetting the tremendous development efforts of governments, multilateral organizations, and other actors.

In the context of rapidly growing disaster losses and high-profile catastrophic disasters, it is often difficult to imagine reducing the impact from hazard events. But societies have successfully overcome similar challenges in the past. For centuries, urban fires were a global concern for the public, private, and finance sectors, as well as for the communities directly affected. Urban fires devastated Rome in 64 CE, London in 1666, Moscow in 1812, Chicago in 1871, and Boston in 1872; the 1906 San Francisco fire destroyed nearly 95 percent of the city, and the Tokyo fire of 1923 killed over 40,000 people. Yet we do not see catastrophic urban fires any more, and this hazard has largely been consigned to history. The reasons—implementation of modern building codes, land-use planning, establishment and expansion of emergency services, greater citizen responsibility, and insurance regulations—are essentially the same levers that we can apply today to consigning natural disasters to history. Disaster risk assessments can assist us by uncovering these policy levers and helping to build a compelling case for action.

Risk assessments provide an opportunity before a disaster to determine the likely deaths, damages, and losses (direct and indirect) that will result from a hazard event, and to highlight which actions will be most effective in reducing the impacts on individuals, communities, and governments.
This ability to model disaster loss and to provide robust analysis of the costs and benefits of risk preparedness, reduction, and avoidance has made disaster risk assessments a powerful tool in disaster risk management (DRM). As a result, the number of risk assessments being undertaken is growing, innovation has flourished, and a vast array of approaches, experiences, and lessons learned now exists.

As the Hyogo Framework for Action period ends against a backdrop of challenging disaster risk trends, and consultations toward a post-2015 framework move forward, it is important to reflect on the role of disaster risk assessments in achieving disaster and climate resilience, and on the contributions risk assessments have made over the last 10 years. This policy note is founded on, and framed by, the accompanying publication Understanding Risk in an Evolving World: Emerging Best Practices in Natural Disaster Risk Assessment, which features case studies that span 40 countries and that showcase emerging best practices, demonstrate how risk assessments are being used to inform DRM and broader development, and highlight lessons learned through these efforts.
Taken as a group, these case studies demonstrate the need to continue investment in accurate risk information and suggest recommendations for the future of risk assessment.