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A partnership for saving lives and rebuilding livelihoods
Throughout history, natural disasters have severely disrupted societies and climate change may well mean an increased likelihood and severity of natural disasters in the future. Volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc, have in numerous occurrences left communities, cities, and even whole countries to deal with human drama while critical infrastructure for emergency operations are partly or completely paralyzed by the forces of disaster. Damaged hospitals, houses, roads, water-, waste- and electricity- facilities limit recognized relief organizations in providing immediate and effective services. In many cases such disaster struck areas lack sufficient resources, specific knowledge and equipment to provide emergency repairs and temporary facilities
The Disaster Resource Network (DRN) is an initiative of the World Economic Forum designed to provide the humanitarian sector access to resources, knowledge and assets from the Engineering and Construction sector that matches the immediate needs upon the occurrence of a natural disaster.
History
Coinciding with the 2001 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, an earthquake devastated Gujarat, India. Forum members in the engineering, construction and logistics fields were ready to put their resources to work but found there was no established mechanism for getting this help to relief workers on the ground.
Faced with this, Forum members recognized that as global corporate citizens, the private sector must do more than simply fund relief organizations. In their view, business should proactively participate in a multi-sector effort to prevent and mitigate the effects of disasters.
In response, Forum members established the Disaster Resource Network (DRN) – a point of contact and coordination for companies that want to provide support to disaster management efforts in developing countries.
DRN Today
Today the DRN is an aspiring and a fast growing network of Engineering and Construction companies that are committed to train company voluntary engineers and deploy these engineers and/or equipment from local offices, vendors or shops, should the humanitarian community request so by activating the DRN.
To increase its impact the DRN recently embarked on an effort to formalize a global collaboration with the humanitarian agencies through the Inter Agency Standing Commission (IASC) Emergency Shelter Cluster. The Emergency Shelter Cluster represents many of the major humanitarian agencies and is co-chaired by the International Federation of the Red Cross and Crescent and the UNHCR.
Furthermore, in an effort to build capacity, the DRN is pursuing a global training partnership with a reputable organisation in providing a training programmes for its partner and member companies.
Contact us
Please contact us at: drn@weforum.org
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