ABOUT ADPC

Established in 1986 on the campus of the Asian Institution of Technology, in Bangkok, Thailand under the initiative of United Nations Development Program (UNDP), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) and World Meteorological Organization (WMO), ADPC has grown over the years from a training center providing capacity building programs for the region, to a premier organization working in the field of disaster risk reduction.

With over 100 staff and 5 project offices in the Asia region, ADPC’s activities are focusing on eight thematic areas:

  • Climate Change and Climate Risk Management

  • Community-based Disaster Risk Reduction

  • End to end multi hazard early warning system

  • Good governance & Disaster Risk Management systems development

  • Mainstreaming disaster risk reduction into development policy

  • Public Health in Emergencies

  • Resilient Cities and Urban Disaster Management

  • Disaster Risk Assessment & Monitoring

The beginning of ADPC in 1986 occurred from the insights that more disasters were having increasingly severe consequences in the rapidly growing societies of Asia and that there was a pressing need to increase both official and public abilities to save lives, reduce harm and limit future damages. While the initial interest was to improve all aspects of disaster management especially through professional training programs, there was a deeper understanding of the Founding Director, Col. Brian Ward, that it was necessary to alter the way most people considered “natural disasters”. While the occurrence of natural hazards would continue to occur with the ferocity of nature, there was much more that could be done through better informed and systematic human actions to protect people and to reduce their exposure to avoidable losses and damage.

A widespread and prevailing view until the early 1980s was that natural disasters were just forceful and destructive natural events such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods and cyclones, often considered as unavoidable “acts of God”, against which humankind was powerless. Therefore the emphasis of national governments and the wider international assistance community was only on responding to the events after they occurred, without taking account of either the social or the economic implications of the causes. The advancements in understanding the scientific processes that underlie hazardous events and a growing recognition of people’s exposure and increasing vulnerability led to further professional engagement in the subject.

A more technocratic and increasingly informed recognition of disaster risk management came into existence. This led initially to growing interest in the design and implementation of ways to mitigate losses through physical and structural measures to reduce hazards or to increase the resistance of structures. Then gradually through wider international interests, governments and institutions around the world have realized that unless the underlying social and economic risk factors that continue to create more vulnerable conditions for people are properly addressed, then effective long-term beneficial developments cannot be sustained in any society. It is in this context that ADPC’s role has evolved through innovative ways of managing disaster risk, building institutional capacities, and forging partnerships over the past 25 years.