Tsunami

As the first city in France to join the Making Cities Resilient 2030 initiative, Cannes, on France’s Mediterranean coast, is a European leader in its commitment to environmental action. Last October, the city convened the Cannes Climathon 2021 to explore innovative solutions for climate hazards and disaster risk reduction.

For the urban coastal city of Hong Kong, typhoons are a regular occurrence from May to October. Consequently, Hong Kong’s infrastructure is designed to cope with the strong winds, floods, and storm surges they bring. Recently, however, the territory experienced two powerful storms in consecutive years. In 2017, Super Typhoon Hato struck the region, and in the following year, the city witnessed Super Typhoon Mangkhut, the strongest typhoon since 1983. But Hong Kong suffered lower economic losses from both storms when compared with the neighboring Guangdong region and the city of Macau, thanks partly to its well-coordinated response and resilient infrastructure.

Disaster preparedness saves lives in the face of the world’s consistently deadliest natural hazard: tsnuamis. The “Effective International Cooperation to Reduce Tsunami Risk at the Local Level,” organized by UNDRR, convened experts and practitioners from to showcase local innovation and solutions to reduce tsunami risk reduction.

While the physical damage caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami has been all but erased, its influence on disaster risk reduction, and disaster preparedness planning more specifically, continues to today.