“These indicators will be used as baselines for future risk reduction and to ensure continuous improvements of the national DRR plan,” said Ms Jureerat Thepart, Deputy Director of DDPM. 

In collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), UNDRR led the training sessions for this first of a kind workshop. “Measuring reductions in direct economic losses and damage to critical infrastructure is a challenge for countries because the data is either not collected or it is collected by a number of different government agencies, and coordinating the collection and reporting of that data can be complex for the country,” said Mr Timothy Wilcox, Program Management Officer in the UNDRR Asia-Pacific Regional Office. 

One obstacle in collecting this data is that much of the economic losses generated by disasters are felt by the private sector. As a result, most economic loss estimates are believed to be underreporting the true impact of disasters. Mr Thanathorn Sitthipol, from the Siam Cement Group (SCG), called on the private and public sectors to become involved in sharing the responsibility of reporting damage and loss data. 

As a result of this workshop, Thailand’s DDPM will have preliminary roadmap to coordinate the collection of data it needs from these sectors to strengthen the country’s resilience to disasters and report its progress in implementing the Sendai Framework.

Date:

28 Aug 2019

Sources:

United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction - Regional Office for Asia and Pacific (UNDRR AP)

Themes:

Information Management, Critical Infrastructure

Countries:

Thailand

Regions:

Asia