What is DRRM?

BY MIKE MANALO
DRRM (Disaster Risk Reduction
Management)
 Disaster Risk Reduction Management (DRRM) aims to reduce the
damage caused by natural hazards like earthquakes, floods,
droughts and cyclones, through an ethic of prevention of risk.
There is no such thing as “natural”
Disaster, only natural hazards.
 Disasters often follow natural hazards. A disaster's severity depends
on how much impact a hazard has on society and the environment.
The scale of the impact in turn depends on the choices we make for
our lives and for our environment. These choices relate to how we
grow our food, where and how we build our homes, what kind of
government we have, how our financial system works and even
what we teach in schools. Each decision and action makes us more
vulnerable to disasters - or more resilient to them.
Disaster Risk Reduction
Management is about choices.
 Disaster risk reduction is the concept and practice of reducing
disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyze and reduce the
causal factors of disasters.
 Reducing exposure to hazards, lessening vulnerability of people and
property, wise management of land and the environment, and
improving preparedness and early warning for adverse events are
all examples of disaster risk reduction.
Disaster Risk Reduction
Management is everyone’s
business
 Disaster risk reduction includes disciplines like disaster management,
disaster mitigation and disaster preparedness, but DRR is also part of
sustainable development. In order for development activities to be
sustainable they must also reduce disaster risk.
Importance of DRRM

 From a development perspective, therefore, disaster risk reduction is

vital for building a more equitable and sustainable future. Making
investments in prevention and preparedness, including through civil
defense exercises, is a necessary part of systematic efforts to
increase resilience to disaster.
Five (5) priorities identified for
action.
 1) To ensure that disaster risk reduction is a national and a local
priority.
 2) To identify, assess, and monitor disaster risks and enhance early
warning systems.
 3) To use knowledge, innovation, and education to build a culture
of safety and resilience at all levels.
 4) To reduce the underlying risk factors.
and
 5) To strengthen disaster preparedness for effective response and
recovery at all levels, from the local to the national.
How do we reduce risk?

 There are activities that DRRM involves that is related.

Prevention

 Activities and measures to avoid existing and new disaster risks

(often less costly than disaster relief and response). For instance,
relocating exposed people and assets away from a hazard area.
Mitigation

 The lessening or limitation of the adverse impacts of hazards and

related disasters. For instance, constructing flood defenses, planting
trees to stabilize slopes and implementing strict land use and
building construction codes.
Transfer

 The process of formally or informally shifting the financial

consequences of particular risks from one party to another whereby
a household, community, enterprise or state authority will obtain
resources from the other party after a disaster occurs, in exchange
for ongoing or compensatory social or financial benefits provided to
that other party.
Preparedness

 The knowledge and capacities of governments, professional

response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals
to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from the impacts
of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions. For
instance, installing early warning systems, identifying evacuation
routes and preparing emergency supplies.
Identifying and Understanding risk

 Awareness, identification, understanding and measurement of

disaster risks are all clearly fundamental underpinnings of disaster risk
management (UNISDR, 2015b). Disaster risk reduction is about
decisions and choices, including a lack of, so risk information has a
role in five key areas of decision making:
Five key areas of decision making

 Risk Identification
 Financial Protection
 Risk reduction
 Resilient reconstruction
 Preparedness
Risk Identification

 Because the damages and losses caused by historical disasters are

often not widely known, and because the potential damages and
losses that could arise from future disasters (including infrequent but
high-impact events) may not be known at all, DRM is given a low
priority. Appropriate communication of robust risk information at the
right time can raise awareness and trigger action.
Financial protection

 Disaster risk analysis was born out of the financial and insurance
sector’s need to quantify the risk of comparatively rare high-impact
natural hazard events. As governments increasingly seek to manage
their sovereign financial risk or support programs that manage
individual financial risks (e.g., micro-insurance or household
earthquake insurance).
Risk Reduction

 Hazard and risk information may be used to inform a broad range of

activities to reduce risk, from improving building codes and
designing risk reduction measures (such as flood and storm surge
protection), to carrying out macro-level assessments of the risks to
different types of buildings (for prioritizing investment in
reconstruction and retrofitting, for example).
Resilient reconstruction

 Risk assessment can play a critical role in impact modelling before

an event strikes (in the days leading up to a cyclone, for example),
or it can provide initial and rapid estimates of human, physical, and
economic loss in an event’s immediate aftermath. Moreover, risk
information for resilient reconstruction needs to be available before
an event occurs, since after the event there is rarely time to collect
the information needed to inform resilient design and land-use
plans.
Preparedness

 An understanding of the geographic area affected, along with the

intensity and frequency of different hazard events, is critical for
planning evacuation routes, creating shelters, and running
preparedness drills. Providing a measure of the impact of different
hazard events potential number of damaged buildings, fatalities
and injuries, secondary hazards makes it possible to establish
detailed and realistic plans for better response to disasters, which
can ultimately reduce the severity of adverse natural events.
Why do we need to study DRRM?

 Firstly, it is to help resolve these disaster situations and to give

motivated conscientious the citizens, the knowledge and skills to
make a difference. Studying risk, crisis.
Resources

 http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/ourperspective/ourp
erspectivearticles/2012/08/15/building-resilience-the-importance-of-
disaster-risk-reduction.html
 https://www.unisdr.org/who-we-are/what-is-drr
 https://www.preventionweb.net/risk/drr-drm
 https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-
sectors/law-enforcement-and-security/why-should-you-study-
disaster-management