Resources
I read a great deal that never makes it into an article. This page is where the primary sources, data platforms, and institutional documents that inform my thinking live — organised by theme, with a sentence on why each one matters rather than a generic description. These are working tools for practitioners, not a bibliography.
Grouped in – Extreme Heat – DRR Investment – IWRM and Extreme Events – Disasters and AI – Data-Driven DRR and Preparedness
Extreme Heat
UNDRR — Heatwave terminology and hazard definition
The clearest single statement of the problem this site keeps returning to: even UNDRR’s own reference page concedes the standard WMO/WHO definition “is not sufficient” for operational use.
UNDRR/WMO — Extreme Heat Risk Governance Framework and Toolkit (launched COP30, Nov 2025)
The system finally naming heat as one of the “least managed” climate threats worldwide — worth reading alongside my piece on why governance frameworks without operational definitions are incomplete.
WMO/WHO — Heatwaves and Health: Guidance on Warning-System Development (2015)
Still the reference document a decade on. Over 100 pages, and worth it if you’re building a warning system rather than just reading about one.
Global Heat Health Information Network (GHHIN)
The most active technical community working on the localisation problem this site argues needs to be addressed at the local level and learn about at the global level — a good place to see what individual countries and cities are actually doing.
DRR Investment
UNDRR — Financing Prevention and De-risking Investment
The source for the statistic I keep coming back to: as little as $2 of every $100 in development aid goes to prevention. Read this before you read my article on the subject.
UNDRR — Global Assessment Report (GAR) 2025
The headline figure worth knowing: every dollar spent on disaster risk reduction returns roughly fifteen in avoided recovery costs. The case for prevention has never been a knowledge problem — it’s a political economy problem, which is exactly my argument.
UNDRR — International Cooperation in Disaster Risk Reduction: Target F
The full data behind the underinvestment argument, broken down by country — useful if you want the receipts rather than just the summary statistic.
World Bank / GFDRR — Disaster Risk Financing and Insurance Program
Where the financial instruments side of this argument actually lives — sovereign risk pooling, contingent credit, insurance-linked securities. The tools exist (albeit in limited contexts and needs to be expanded); uptake is the bottleneck.
IWRM and Extreme Events
Disclosure: I ran this institution’s Secretariat. Its technical reports remain a serious primary source on transboundary basin management under climate pressure, whatever one’s views are on the politics.
A study of the Se Kong, Se San, and Sre Pok tributaries that reaches an uncomfortable conclusion: existing water governance in Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia is not equipped for the hydrological shifts already underway.
UN-Water — Progress on Transboundary Water Cooperation (SDG Indicator 6.5.2)
The global scorecard on transboundary cooperation. Worth knowing where the Mekong basin “sits” against other major river systems, not just assuming its problems are unique.
Integrated water resources management (IWRM) for climate change adaptation
A rare piece that takes the Mekong seriously as a case study for how IWRM institutions can — or can’t — absorb climate adaptation into their existing mandates.
Disasters and AI
PreventionWeb — AI for Disaster Risk Reduction (collection)
A running collection rather than a single report — useful for tracking where AI applications in DRR are maturing versus where they’re still lab demonstrations.
The most balanced technical assessment I’ve found: honest about where AI genuinely improves early warning, and equally honest that most operational systems haven’t integrated it yet.
WMO — Fostering global cooperation on AI for early warning systems
The institutional players are only now working out shared standards and trust frameworks for AI-generated warnings — governance is visibly running behind the technology here, same pattern as heat.
Columbia NCDP — AI for Early Warning Systems and Anticipatory Action
Names the uncomfortable irony directly: the places that need effective early warning most are also the most data-scarce, which is exactly where AI promises the most and currently delivers the least.
Data-Driven DRR and Preparedness
UNDRR — Data Resources and Systems
The entry point to UNDRR’s own data infrastructure — Desinventar, PreventionWeb, the Early Warnings for All dashboard. Start here before hunting for disaster data elsewhere.
GFDRR — Open Data for Resilience Initiative (OpenDRI)
Fifteen years of open-data infrastructure work, including tools like InaSAFE that translate raw hazard data into something a local decision-maker can actually use.
GFDRR — Disaster Risk Analytics
Where risk quantification meets real decisions — recovery planning in Ukraine, cyclone reconstruction in Malawi. Analytics that’s actually been tested against a real disaster, not just modelled.
UNDRR — Data Tools for Assessing Disaster Risk Reduction
A literature review of open-access spatial datasets against the Sendai Framework’s own data requirements — useful for seeing exactly which gaps are structural versus which are just under-resourced.