Disaster Risk and Diversity – The WorldRiskReport 2023

The WorldRiskReport 2023, a joint project of IFHV and “Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft”, has been launched on Wednesday, September 20th. The report contains expert articles from academic research and humanitarian practice as well as the WorldRiskIndex.

With the focus topic "Diversity", the WorldRiskReport 2023 analyzes the correlation between disaster risks and dimensions of diversity – such as age, gender, health, sexual orientation and social background. The report offers solutions for a more inclusive disaster management, highlighting one of the most important findings: "We need a lot more research on marginalized groups. Because for disaster management to be effective, we need reliable and accessible data," says Dr Ilona Auer Frege, Executive Director of BEH.

As every year, an essential part of the report is the WorldRiskIndex. It reveals that Germany’s disaster risk due to extreme natural events has further increased: Germany now ranks 94th and is thereby situated in the global midfield. Meanwhile, the countries with the highest risk are the Philippines, Indonesia and India. Overall, the WorldRiskIndex provides an assessment of the latent risk of 193 countries falling victim to a humanitarian disaster caused by extreme natural events and the negative impacts of climate change. It rests on more than 100 high-quality indicators related to vulnerability and exposure to natural extreme events. Since 2022, the underlying data as well as a curated longitudinal dataset for long-term trend analysis can also be found on the Humanitarian Data Exchange.

Daniel Weller, Senior Data Scientist at IFHV and responsible for the calculation of the WorldRiskIndex, describes the impact of diversity on disaster risk referring to the Index: "Using Papua New Guinea and Egypt as examples for this year, it is easy to see how the category of 'gender disparities' can influence a country's vulnerability. While the increase in disparities in Papua New Guinea makes vulnerability, and consequently disaster risk, increase strongly, the relative reduction in 'gender disparities' in Egypt leads to a significant improvement in the global ranking."

The full report can be downloaded here.