Disasters, resulting from natural hazards kill an average of approximately 45,000 people globally each year, representing 0.1% of global deaths. And while the number of deaths has slowly declined over the past century, people continue to be exposed to natural hazards, and economic damages are on the rise. In the past decade alone, disasters resulted in a global economic losses and damages of around 0.22% of the share of GDP.
That is not all, the most destructive disasters that could occur are still to happen yet. Rapid escalation and intensity in the incidence of severe disaster events have become a huge threat to the global community.
Asia-Pacific, on the other hand, with 85% of all the people affected by disaster in the world, is in the centre stage of all disasters. The region is also at the forefront of indirect disaster impacts, including the highest number of internal displacements across the globe. Due to rapid rate of population growth, urbanization, poverty, climate change and geographical location, most of the Asian countries have become highly susceptible to natural disasters; some of them, per se: flood, cyclone, drought, earthquake, landslide, extreme temperature, heavy rain, epidemics, etc. It has been felt that there is limited capacity at global, regional and national levels in terms of knowledge base, skills training, long-term planning, emergency preparedness and policy development to respond to such severe disaster events. Consequently, to address these issues in innovative ways, it gave way to a program on Disaster Preparedness, Mitigation and Management (DPMM) at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT) in August 2008. AIT being located at the centre of this region provides a strategic insight into the happenings in the world of disasters and development.
DPMM program uses interdisciplinary capacities (engineering, medicine, natural and social science, as well as management) to manage and minimize the effects of disasters in people on the front lines of disaster response and preparedness. It provides professional education and short-term training for the capacity building of the Asia-Pacific as well as neighbouring regions.
The courses at DPMM are designed and developed by AIT Faculties and experts from partner institutions having more than a decade of experience in this particular field. The program is being successfully run with students from more than 23 countries across the world and has admitted 120 students till date.