Recent crises and disasters across the globe, including Hurricane Irma in the Caribbean, floods and landslides in Sierra Leone, severe flooding in the United States and earthquakes in Mexico serve to highlight the very real and immediate need for disaster risk mitigation and reduction efforts. With many nations still dealing with the impacts of recent events, the UNISDR (United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction) International Day for Disaster Reduction 2017 (IDDR 2017) taking place on Friday 13 October is perfectly timed to highlight some of the challenges faced around the world in preparing for and mitigating against the impacts of disasters, as well as celebrating how communities and nations are working to reduce the exposure to and impacts of disasters.

The UK is a world leader both in responding to crises and in building resilience against future disasters, and the UK Government is committed to continuing to help strengthen global peace, security and governance as well as resilience and response to crises globally. As the UK’s national meteorological service, the Met Office works as an advisor to government departments to help them deliver on these commitments as well as supporting early anticipation of developing severe weather events. This helps enable early civil contingency planning in the UK and humanitarian response across the globe.

In addition to immediate crisis response, we provide global expertise essential for long-term resilience building, supporting efforts to build capacity overseas. This helps improve local response to disasters and mitigation against the impacts of our changing climate. We work in partnership with the Department for International Development, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, national meteorological and hydrological services, non-governmental organisations and the private sector to develop weather and climate services across the globe for the protection of lives, livelihoods and property.

In the lead up to IDDR 2017, we will be publishing a series of blog posts highlighting our global disaster reduction expertise and experience. From our use of ground-breaking science to support the development of critical weather and climate services, to our humanitarian response to the Mediterranean refugee crisis, the Met Office is working at the forefront of disaster risk reduction efforts in the UK and across the globe.

View our DRR webpages for more information.