Capacity building for disaster risk reduction

An increasing number of devastating natural disasters have occurred during recent years. Climate change is set to worsen their incidence and impacts even further making the risk of disasters a global concern. The increased extent and intensity of disasters has resulted in higher numbers of mortalities, social problems and economic losses. The growing complexity of disasters in terms of their diversity, magnitude, frequency and uncertainty, requires that even countries previously considered not being at high risk from disasters, have had to re-evaluate and strengthen their risk reduction strategies and capacities. Disaster risk reduction strategies aim to avoid (as in prevention) or limit (as in mitigation and preparedness) the adverse impacts of hazards, within the broad context of sustainable development (UNISDR, 2004). Disaster risk reduction strategies can be hazard-specific, sector-specific or commonly applicable across different types of disasters and involve multi-sectorial disciplines regardless of their nature and scale. Amongst them, capacity building has been widely accepted as a disaster risk reduction strategy that builds the resilience of targeted groups for better prevention through developing the preparedness and response strategies against disasters, which can be focused at institutional, community and individual levels. Capacity building for disaster risk reduction sits at the interface of policymaking, engineering and scientific research, due to the interdependencies and cascading impacts of disasters, and calls for a close and continuous exchange within these disciplines in order to provide effective and long-term solutions (UNISDR, 2013). This special issue was initiated as part of the CARE-RISK workshop (Capacity Building to Reduce Disaster Risk in the UK and Malaysia) funded by the British Council Researcher Links programme. As disaster mitigation and management has been identified as one of the targeted areas of the Built Environment Project and Asset Management Journal (BEPAM) the guest editors are pleased to publish this special issue that focuses on capacity building for disaster risk reduction