UN-SPIDER organizes pre-event to AMCDRR

UN-SPIDER and World Bank's Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) successfully organized a pre-conference event of the 6th Asian Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction (AMCDRR) in Bangkok. The event entitled "Investing in Geospatial and space-based information to support Disaster Risk Reduction & Climate Change Adaptation investment" was held on 22 June at the Bangkok Convention Center.

Over 55 international participants attended the event. Seven presentations were held including from UN-SPIDER, ICIMOD, ADRC, and JAXA. Country experiences from Indonesia and China were presented. The participants also discussed on the topic "How Earth Observation can be reflected well in HFA2 framework". The participants agreed that every country should have access to geospatial information and that space technologies should be mainstreamed in disaster risk reduction processes. The need for capacity building in order to allow national disaster risk reduction managers to benefit from space technologies and to close the gap between technology providers and decision makers was also stressed.

The outcomes of the pre-conference event will be reported to the stakeholder meeting of the International Science Advisory Mechanism and in the Technical Session - 2 of AMCDRR in order to highlight the importance of space-based information in disaster risk reduction.