Disaster Risk Reduction in the ASEAN Region: Understanding and Assessing Systematic Risks of Floods and Landslides in A River Basin Context

17 May 2022 -

The Southeast Asian Nations are undergoing rapid socio-economic transformations with associated dynamic changes in the hazard, vulnerability, and risk characteristics. Climate change and human induced factors such as dense human settlements and socio-economic activities near fragile areas are expected to exacerbate these risks acting as a threat multiplier. Institutions in Southeast Asian countries are putting in place overarching disaster risk reduction plans and policies from national to local level; and rapidly progressing towards localizing them to specific sectors with robust implementation at the community level. There is a need to strengthen these efforts by addressing the systemic risks brought by climate change affecting the disaster vulnerability.

Keeping the above background in view, a project was implemented to assess the systemic risks of floods and landslides in selected river basins by integrating climate change projections into risk assessments in cooperation with the ASEAN Working Group on Prevention and Mitigation (WG P&M) of the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM) with support from the Japan-ASEAN Integration Fund (JAIF).

This paper presents the results of the project succinctly and outlines the guidelines developed for practitioners and decision-makers to understand systemic risks and address systemic risks through planning processes. Developing forward-looking risk assessments equipped decision-makers with the ability to manage rapidly changing risk profiles because of climate change and related uncertainties.