Fourth, it says that businesses need to be involved before, during and after disaster. The aim is to help to ensure that private resources and expertise are mobilized in support of effective disaster risk management.

Fifth, it argues that businesses and their public sector and civil society partners should promote the benefits of resilience to consumers, and sixth, extend education and professional training. The goal is to drive an increase in public awareness – without which risk reduction and pro-resilience policies will be much less effective.

Finally, it underscores the need to harness the potential of data and technology to ensure effective implementation of resilience and risk reduction measures.

“If countries and companies take up these recommendations together, we will move a step closer to meeting our shared goal of resilience,” said Mr. Glasser.

Annual economic losses from disasters are now running at over US$300 billion, according to UNISDR’s Global Assessment Report. And even that is a conservative estimate, because it only counts damage in the built environment caused by earthquakes, tsunamis, cyclones and river flooding.

Urbanization is adding to this risk, by concentrating populations and economic activities.

By 2030, when the Sendai Framework expires, six in every ten people will live in cities. According to World Bank data, urban areas already generate 80% of global GDP. 

As population magnets and economic drivers, cities are particularly vulnerable to increasingly frequent and extreme weather hazards such as storms, climate change impacts including water shortages, environmental degradation, and unsafe construction in seismic zones.

When a disaster hits a city, it can also disrupt global supply chains. Disasters therefore pose a major threat to industry and commerce with the potential for cascading disruption of vital industries far from their point of impact.

Some 60% of urban buildings and infrastructure set to be in place by 2030 is still to be constructed. And because 80% of investment decisions are taken by the private sector, risk-informed, resilience-focused approaches are critical.

ARISE was created in November 2015. It aims to leverage business resilience know-how and encourage investment decisions that take disaster risk into account, in order to help the private sector to play its role in implementing the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, a 15-year agreement adopted by the international community in 2015.