What’s Disaster Risk Reduction? Tips for Students to Know
According to Climate Central, a nonprofit group of scientists and journalists who report on climate, the United States has had 426 climate disasters costing at least $1 billion since 1980. The highest number of billion-dollar disasters occurred in 2023, with 2024 and 2025 coming in second and third.
As these disasters increase in frequency, disaster risk reduction (DRR) becomes even more essential. A master’s degree in disaster resilience leadership helps the professionals who work in this field develop better plans for a future with less fallout from disasters.
What Is Disaster Risk Reduction?
DRR consists of the processes and policies established to protect communities from disasters’ negative impacts. Organizations such as the United Nations’ Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) work to prevent new risks from arising, reduce existing risks, and increase communities’ disaster resilience — their ability to recover when disasters occur.
According to the UNDRR, DRR can be described as “disaster risk reduction is the policy objective of preventing new disaster risk, reducing existing disaster risk, and managing residual risk, thereby strengthening resilience."
Disaster risk reduction is founded on the premise that preparation combined with recovery efforts is more effective than recovery alone. Effective preparation can not only help prevent casualties, but also benefit communities economically. Disaster risk is created through the interaction of hazards, exposure, vulnerability, and capacity. According to the UNDRR’s Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk Reduction for 2025, every dollar spent on DRR delivers an average of $15 saved in future disaster recovery costs. Those savings can help communities collect additional funding for critical needs such as housing, healthcare, social services, schools, and recovery programs that support residents long after a disaster has ended.
Key Goals of Disaster Risk Reduction
DRR is focused on protecting those who are most vulnerable to natural hazards and emergencies as well as the collective trauma they leave behind. To determine where risk is greatest, three factors are considered:
- A community’s exposure to potential hazards
- The nature of these hazards and their potential damages
- The community’s current capacity to respond
Much of DRR is guided by the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, adopted by the U.N. in March of 2015. The Sendai Framework has seven key goals:
- Limit fatalities
- Limit the number of people affected by emergencies and disasters
- Mitigate economic impact
- Improve how infrastructure responds to disaster-caused damage
- Increase the number of countries with DRR strategies on the local and national levels
- Increase international cooperation in improving DRR for low-income countries
- Increase the accuracy and availability of early warning systems
3 Examples of Disaster Risk Reduction and How It Works
Consider some of the ways that DRR policies help communities mitigate the effects of natural hazards and disasters and improve response.
Building More Resilient Infrastructure
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), collapsing buildings account for up to 80 percent of earthquake casualties. The organization works to improve building codes, enforce risk-informed city planning, and invest in infrastructure more likely to survive earthquakes and other natural hazards.
Consider the difference between the effects of the 1971 Sylmar earthquake in California’s San Fernando Valley and the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Olive View Hospital was impacted in both.
In the Sylmar earthquake, the hospital — built in 1970 in line with the state’s earthquake-resistant building codes of the time — nearly collapsed. In the aftermath of the disaster, officials reexamined codes and issued new guidelines for reinforcing concrete structures. After being rebuilt to the new standards, Olive View suffered only minimal damage in the Northridge earthquake, and remained operational — despite the two quakes being almost the same magnitude.
Improving Early Warning Systems
Early warning systems, which monitor and predict potential hazards and warn communities through communication networks including mobile alerts, sirens, and television and radio broadcasts, give communities more time to prepare in the face of oncoming disasters. Launched in 2022, the U.N. Early Warnings for All initiative set a goal for everyone on the planet to have access to early warning systems for disasters or emergencies by the end of 2027. This initiative was built on four pillars:
- Understanding disaster risk knowledge and management
- Detecting, monitoring, analyzing, and forecasting
- Disseminating warnings to the public
- Improving preparedness and response abilities
Early warning systems have already helped communities during disasters. One success story can be found in Dominica. After extensive damage in 2017’s Hurricane Maria and 2019’s Tropical Storm Erika, the Dominica Red Cross worked with the Office of Disaster Management and local governments to establish a Community Early Warning System (CEWS). When the small community of Marigot was later threatened by heavy rainfall, the CEWS alerted village residents to an imminent flood risk, which allowed all residents to evacuate safely.
Encouraging and Enforcing Better Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery Policy
Disaster risk reduction organizations help communities advocate for policy changes that affect how people allocate resources, share information, and coordinate assistance before, during, and after disasters. These policies make communities more resilient, ensuring that they have the right tools to respond to emergent situations and recover quickly.
Disasters aren’t always single events, and disaster risk reduction policies can play an important role in many capacities. Consider the effects of extreme heat. When California strengthened its workplace heat safety standards in 2010, it saw a 33 percent reduction in heat-related deaths from outdoor workers, according to the UNDRR. As more communities face extreme heat, DRR will become even more essential to ensure that working conditions are safe.
Improve Disaster Outcomes With Tulane University
Prevention is critical to disaster recovery. When communities have the tools to moderate the effects of disasters and emergencies, they’re likely to face fewer casualties, less damage, and milder economic fallout. As climate change, urbanization, and global uncertainty continue to reshape disaster risk, communities increasingly need leaders who can anticipate emerging risks, build resilience across sectors, and develop equitable, evidence-based solutions. Disaster risk reduction is no longer solely the responsibility of emergency managers—it requires collaborative leadership spanning public health, social work, engineering, policy, planning, and community development.
In Tulane School of Social Work’s Master of Science in Disaster Resilience Leadership (MS-DRL) program, students prepare to join a network of resilience experts. At the only program in the nation with a focus on FEMA’s National Disaster Recovery Framework, students learn key tenets of DRR, including risk assessment and environmental infrastructure, through a flexible, interactive program offered on-campus or online, and full-time or part-time.
Become a leader in disaster risk reduction with Tulane University.
Recommended Readings
What Are MSW Dual Degree Programs?
Crisis Leadership: Skills and Strategies
What Is Disaster Recovery for Mental Health?
Sources:
Climate Central, “2025 in Review: U.S. Billion-Dollar Disasters”
Concern Worldwide US, “Disaster Risk Reduction, Explained”
FEMA, “Building Code Lessons From the 1971 San Fernando Earthquake”
Practical Action, “Guide to Early Warning Systems”
UNESCO, “Infrastructure and Building Resilience”
United Nations, “Early Warnings for All”
United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, “Definition: Disaster Risk Reduction”