MHEWC supports comprehensive institutional assessments to identify gaps, weaknesses, and coordination challenges within disaster risk management governance systems and to recommend practical measures for strengthening institutional capacity, accountability, policy coherence, coordination, and operational effectiveness

Assessment of  Indicative Institutional Barriers in Disaster Risk Management

In many global south countries, national disaster risk management plans have become outdated, overly descriptive, and operationally weak. They often consist of broad narratives outlining what central, regional, and subnational governments are expected to do, without clearly defining institutional mandates, decision-making authority, operational procedures, coordination arrangements, financing responsibilities, performance indicators, or accountability mechanisms. As a result, these plans provide limited practical guidance for managing rapidly evolving, interconnected, and increasingly severe multi-hazard risks.

Disaster risk management can no longer be treated as a routine administrative function or a primarily reactive emergency-response responsibility. The escalating frequency, intensity, and complexity of floods, cyclones, droughts, landslides, wildfires, heatwaves, epidemics, technological accidents, environmental degradation, and compound hazards increasingly resemble a continuous, nature-driven emergency requiring coordinated national preparedness and sustained operational readiness. These hazards are repeatedly turning into disasters, causing fatalities, displacement, livelihood disruption, infrastructure destruction, ecosystem degradation, economic losses, and extensive climate-related loss and damage.

A central institutional concern is whether exposed landscape systems possess sufficient resilience to absorb, withstand, adapt to, and recover from impending threats. This requires governments to assess the resilience of settlements, river basins, watersheds, agricultural areas, forests, wetlands, coastal zones, transport corridors, industrial areas, critical infrastructure, ecosystems, and essential public-service systems. However, many government institutions continue to operate without comprehensive multi-hazard risk assessments, updated vulnerability databases, resilience benchmarks, scenario-based contingency planning, or measurable standards for determining whether these systems can withstand future shocks.

Government machinery is frequently constrained by fragmented mandates, overlapping responsibilities, weak inter-ministerial coordination, inadequate decentralization, insufficient technical capacity, limited access to risk information, and the absence of interoperable data systems. Disaster-management authorities, meteorological and hydrological services, planning agencies, local governments, infrastructure departments, environmental institutions, humanitarian actors, and security agencies often work through separate administrative structures, databases, reporting systems, and operational procedures. This fragmentation delays decision-making, weakens situational awareness, creates institutional competition, and prevents the development of a unified national risk-management architecture.

Another major barrier is the continued dominance of reactive disaster management. Public institutions frequently mobilize only after hazards have caused visible damage, while insufficient attention is given to prevention, mitigation, preparedness, impact-based forecasting, anticipatory action, resilient infrastructure, ecosystem protection, and risk-informed development planning. Emergency response and relief therefore receive greater political and financial attention than long-term risk reduction, even though preventive investment is generally more effective in reducing future humanitarian and economic losses.

Institutional performance is also undermined by weak accountability. Disaster risk reduction responsibilities are often distributed across numerous ministries and agencies, but there are limited mechanisms for monitoring whether institutions have fulfilled their assigned duties. Plans may identify responsibilities without specifying implementation timelines, budget lines, technical standards, expected outputs, reporting requirements, or consequences for non-performance. This allows risk-reduction commitments to remain aspirational rather than operational.

Inadequate and unpredictable financing further constrains institutional effectiveness. Disaster-management institutions are commonly dependent on annual administrative budgets, emergency allocations, donor-supported projects, or post-disaster appeals. Dedicated and sustained financing for risk assessment, early-warning infrastructure, local preparedness, maintenance of monitoring systems, anticipatory action, resilient reconstruction, and institutional capacity development is often unavailable. Consequently, critical systems remain underfunded, poorly maintained, and unable to operate continuously.

Subnational and local governments face particularly serious limitations. Although national plans frequently assign substantial responsibilities to provincial, district, municipal, and community-level institutions, these entities are rarely provided with adequate financial resources, qualified personnel, equipment, technical guidance, risk information, or decision-making authority. This creates a major gap between centrally developed policies and ground-level implementation. Local authorities are expected to manage disasters but often lack the institutional capability to translate forecasts into timely evacuation, asset protection, emergency assistance, and early action.

Political and bureaucratic factors also impede effective risk governance. Disaster-risk considerations may be subordinated to short-term political interests, prestige infrastructure projects, administrative routines, and development investments that fail to account for future climate and hazard conditions. Institutional resistance to reform, reluctance to share data, centralized decision-making, frequent staff transfers, weak institutional memory, and limited coordination between technical and administrative personnel further reduce operational continuity.

A modern disaster risk management system must therefore move beyond general institutional narratives and establish a legally grounded, operational, technology-enabled, and accountable governance framework. National plans should clearly define who is responsible for each function, what actions must be undertaken, when decisions must be made, what resources are required, how information will be shared, how institutions will coordinate, and how implementation will be monitored.

The assessment needs to investigate the level of modernization of disaster risk governance :

• updated multi-hazard risk, vulnerability, exposure, and resilience assessments;
• clearly defined institutional mandates and standard operating procedures;
• integrated national and subnational coordination mechanisms;
• interoperable risk-information and emergency-management platforms;
• impact-based forecasting and anticipatory-action protocols;
• predefined warning, financing, activation, and response triggers;
• dedicated and predictable disaster-risk financing;
• strengthened technical and human-resource capacity;
• decentralized authority supported by adequate local resources;
• regular simulation exercises and institutional performance reviews;
• risk-informed public investment and development planning; and
• measurable accountability frameworks for national and local institutions.

Effective disaster risk management ultimately depends not only on the existence of policies and plans, but also on whether government institutions possess the authority, capacity, financing, information, technology, coordination arrangements, and accountability systems required to act before hazards become disasters. Institutional reform must therefore be treated as a central component of national resilience, climate adaptation, sustainable development, and the prevention of avoidable loss and damage.

The Assessment of  Structural & Technical Capacity 

The assessment of the country-level Disaster Risk Management (DRM) governance system examines the institutional capacity and capabilities in technical, operational, human resource, coordination, planning, information management, and accountability required for effective multi-hazard disaster risk management. The intended assessment will cover the following areas:

1. Institutional Structure and Technical Capacity

• Assess the existing institutional structure, mandates, roles, responsibilities, and coordination arrangements of institutions responsible for disaster risk management, meteorological services, hydrological services, geological monitoring, environmental monitoring, and other National Meteorological and Hydrological Services-related functions.
• Review institutional technical capacities for undertaking observation, monitoring, forecasting, risk assessment, warning generation, emergency coordination, disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and reconstruction activities.
• Assess the availability, qualifications, competencies, deployment, and retention of technical human resources required to perform meteorological, hydrological, climate, geospatial, early warning, risk assessment, emergency management, and information and communication technology functions.
• Identify institutional and technical human-resource gaps, including staffing shortages, competency gaps, training needs, succession-planning requirements, and dependence on external technical assistance.
• Conduct an institutional assessment in terms of institutional structure, technical capacity, and technical human resources for handling NMHS jobs,
• Institutional ICT structures, facilities, data system management, hardware, software, and data processing technical capacity
• Institutional ( sector ministry and department ) partnership framework, level stakeholders’ accountability in an integrated approach
• National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) risk governance capacity, risk and vulnerability assessment capacity,
• EOC setup, system architecture, ICT system Structure, technical, operational, and functional capacity, field-level data ingestion, processing capacity

This is a comprehensive and structured overview of the required scope for an institutional assessment of a Disaster Risk Management (DRM) governance system, particularly concerning Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEWS).

MHEWC support for the whole aspects of the Disaster Risk Management Governance System Assessment for the Global South Countries

The assessment of the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) governance system will examine the institutional, technical, operational, human-resource, coordination, planning, information-management, and accountability capacities required for effective multi-hazard disaster risk management. The assessment will cover the following areas:

1. Institutional Structure and Technical Capacity

• Assess the existing institutional structure, mandates, roles, responsibilities, and coordination arrangements of institutions responsible for disaster risk management, meteorological services, hydrological services, geological monitoring, environmental monitoring, and other National Meteorological and Hydrological Services-related functions.

• Review institutional technical capacities for undertaking observation, monitoring, forecasting, risk assessment, warning generation, emergency coordination, disaster preparedness, response, recovery, and reconstruction activities.

• Assess the availability, qualifications, competencies, deployment, and retention of technical human resources required to perform meteorological, hydrological, climate, geospatial, early warning, risk assessment, emergency management, and information and communication technology functions.

• Identify institutional and technical human-resource gaps, including staffing shortages, competency gaps, training needs, succession-planning requirements, and dependence on external technical assistance.

2. Institutional ICT Infrastructure and Data-Management Capacity

• Assess existing institutional information and communication technology structures, governance arrangements, technical support mechanisms, and ICT management responsibilities.

• Review the availability, functionality, adequacy, interoperability, security, and maintenance of ICT facilities, including:

  • Data centres and server infrastructure;

  • Workstations and computing facilities;

  • Communication networks;

  • Internet and intranet connectivity;

  • Cloud-based systems;

  • Data-storage and backup facilities;

  • Cybersecurity systems;

  • Emergency communication equipment;

  • Data-transmission systems; and

  • Power backup and system-redundancy arrangements.

• Assess the adequacy and compatibility of institutional hardware, software, databases, analytical platforms, forecasting systems, GIS applications, remote-sensing tools, dashboards, mobile applications, and decision-support systems.

• Review institutional capacity for data acquisition, ingestion, validation, processing, analysis, storage, visualization, dissemination, archiving, recovery, and sharing.

• Assess data-governance arrangements, including data ownership, standards, quality assurance, metadata management, access rights, confidentiality, interoperability, data-sharing protocols, and institutional responsibilities.

3. Institutional Partnership, Coordination, and Accountability Framework

• Assess existing partnership and coordination arrangements among sector ministries, government departments, technical agencies, local governments, emergency services, humanitarian actors, civil society organizations, academic institutions, the private sector, media organizations, and development partners.

• Review the effectiveness of horizontal coordination across sectors and vertical coordination between national, provincial, district, municipal, and community levels.

• Assess the clarity of institutional mandates, reporting lines, decision-making authority, operational responsibilities, and accountability mechanisms.

• Examine the level of stakeholder participation and institutional ownership within an integrated and multi-sectoral DRM governance framework.

• Assess the availability and effectiveness of:

  • Memoranda of understanding;

  • Inter-agency agreements;

  • Standard operating procedures;

  • Data-sharing agreements;

  • Emergency coordination protocols;

  • Joint planning mechanisms;

  • Sector working groups;

  • National and local DRM platforms; and

  • Monitoring and accountability frameworks.

• Identify institutional overlaps, coordination gaps, fragmented responsibilities, duplication of functions, and areas where accountability remains unclear.

4. National Disaster Management Agency Risk-Governance Capacity

• Assess the institutional, legal, policy, strategic, technical, financial, and operational capacity of the National Disaster Management Agency or equivalent authority.

• Review the agency’s ability to provide national leadership, policy direction, coordination, oversight, technical guidance, and operational support for disaster risk management.

• Assess institutional capacity for:

  • Multi-hazard risk and vulnerability assessment;

  • Exposure and vulnerability analysis;

  • Disaster-risk profiling;

  • Climate-risk assessment;

  • Risk mapping;

  • Disaster-loss and damage data management;

  • Preparedness and contingency planning;

  • Emergency coordination;

  • Early warning and anticipatory action;

  • Recovery and reconstruction planning;

  • Disaster-risk financing; and

  • Monitoring and evaluation.

• Review the agency’s capacity to translate risk information into policies, plans, investment decisions, preparedness actions, emergency operations, and resilient recovery programmes.

• Assess the availability of technical guidelines, operational manuals, assessment methodologies, planning tools, information systems, and qualified personnel.

5. Emergency Operations Centre Capacity

The Emergency Operations Centre assessment will examine its physical setup, system architecture, ICT infrastructure, technical capacity, operational readiness, functional arrangements, and linkages with field-level institutions.

The assessment will cover:

• EOC location, accessibility, physical security, workspace design, and operational layout;

• Command, control, coordination, communication, and information-management arrangements;

• Incident-management and emergency decision-making structures;

• EOC system architecture and technical design;

• ICT infrastructure, servers, computers, displays, dashboards, communication equipment, software platforms, databases, and backup systems;

• Integration with meteorological, hydrological, geological, health, security, humanitarian, and local-government information systems;

• Availability of emergency communication channels, including radio, telephone, satellite communication, mobile communication, email, web-based platforms, and mass-notification systems;

• Operational staffing, duty rosters, surge arrangements, technical support, and round-the-clock operational capacity;

• Standard operating procedures, activation protocols, escalation procedures, incident-action planning, reporting procedures, and deactivation arrangements;

• Capacity for receiving, integrating, validating, analysing, and visualizing field-level information;

• Capacity for processing situation reports, damage information, needs information, resource requests, operational updates, and early warning information;

• Field-level data-ingestion arrangements through mobile applications, survey tools, local government systems, sensors, monitoring stations, emergency responders, community volunteers, and humanitarian partners;

• Interoperability between national, subnational, district, municipal, and field-level emergency coordination systems;

• Data backup, cybersecurity, system redundancy, business continuity, and disaster-recovery arrangements;

• EOC simulation exercises, testing, maintenance, after-action reviews, and continuous improvement mechanisms.

Integrated Disaster Risk Management Planning Capacity

6. Risk-Informed DRM Planning Capacity

• Assess institutional capacity to develop and implement risk-informed disaster preparedness, emergency response, recovery, reconstruction, and resilience plans.

• Review whether DRM planning processes are informed by:

  • Hazard assessments;

  • Exposure and vulnerability data;

  • Climate projections;

  • Historical disaster-loss information;

  • Multi-hazard risk scenarios;

  • Impact-based forecasts;

  • Critical infrastructure analysis;

  • Community risk assessments; and

  • Social, economic, environmental, and gender considerations.

• Assess the integration of sector ministries and departments in national and subnational DRM planning processes.

• Review the extent to which DRM is mainstreamed into sectoral plans for:

  • Agriculture and food security;

  • Water resources;

  • Health;

  • Education;

  • Transport;

  • Energy;

  • Housing;

  • Urban development;

  • Environment;

  • Social protection;

  • Telecommunications;

  • Local government;

  • Finance and planning; and

  • Critical infrastructure.

• Assess linkages between DRM plans, climate-change adaptation plans, development plans, humanitarian preparedness plans, public-investment programmes, and local development plans.

• Review the quality, consistency, implementation status, financing arrangements, monitoring systems, and updating mechanisms of preparedness, contingency, response, recovery, and reconstruction plans.

• Assess whether plans contain clearly defined responsibilities, activation thresholds, timelines, resource requirements, operational procedures, coordination arrangements, and accountability mechanisms.

7. ICT Tools and Standing Orders During Emergencies

• Review the availability, adequacy, and operational application of Standing Orders on Disaster, emergency directives, contingency procedures, standard operating procedures, and incident-management protocols.

• Assess whether institutional standing orders clearly define:

  • Roles and responsibilities;

  • Chains of command;

  • Warning authorization;

  • Emergency activation procedures;

  • Information-reporting requirements;

  • Inter-agency coordination arrangements;

  • Resource-mobilization procedures;

  • Evacuation responsibilities;

  • Search-and-rescue responsibilities;

  • Emergency logistics;

  • Public communication;

  • Damage and needs reporting; and

  • Recovery coordination.

• Assess the use of ICT tools for emergency preparedness and operations, including:

  • Emergency dashboards;

  • Decision-support systems;

  • GIS-based common operational pictures;

  • Mobile data-collection applications;

  • Incident-reporting platforms;

  • Resource-tracking systems;

  • Early warning dissemination platforms;

  • Emergency communication systems;

  • Social-media monitoring tools;

  • Situation-reporting systems;

  • Digital contingency plans; and

  • Inter-agency information-sharing platforms.

• Examine whether digital tools and standing orders are integrated, regularly tested, updated, understood by responsible institutions, and supported by adequate training and simulation exercises.

Post-Disaster Damage, Loss, and Needs Assessment

8. PDNA Institutional Structure and Stakeholder Engagement

• Assess the existing national institutional framework for conducting Post-Disaster Needs Assessments.

• Review the roles and responsibilities of the national disaster management authority, planning and finance ministries, sector ministries, national statistical agencies, local governments, technical institutions, humanitarian organizations, civil society, private-sector actors, development partners, and affected communities.

• Assess the availability of a designated lead institution, sector-assessment teams, technical working groups, coordination arrangements, reporting structures, and quality-assurance mechanisms.

• Review stakeholder engagement throughout the PDNA process, including:

  • Assessment planning;

  • Methodology selection;

  • Data collection;

  • Field verification;

  • Sector analysis;

  • Damage and loss estimation;

  • Recovery-needs identification;

  • Validation;

  • Report preparation;

  • Prioritization; and

  • Recovery planning.

• Assess the participation of women, persons with disabilities, older persons, displaced populations, marginalized communities, local authorities, affected households, businesses, and civil society organizations.

9. Institutional Capacity to Conduct PDNA

• Assess national and sectoral capacity to plan, coordinate, undertake, validate, and report a comprehensive PDNA.

• Review the availability of qualified technical personnel in:

  • Economics;

  • Engineering;

  • Infrastructure;

  • Agriculture;

  • Livelihoods;

  • Social sectors;

  • Environment;

  • Disaster risk reduction;

  • Climate change;

  • Gender and social inclusion;

  • Statistics;

  • GIS and remote sensing;

  • Finance;

  • Recovery planning; and

  • Monitoring and evaluation.

• Assess institutional experience in conducting rapid assessments, sector assessments, damage and loss assessments, humanitarian needs assessments, and recovery-needs assessments.

• Review capacity for estimating:

  • Physical damage;

  • Economic losses;

  • Service-delivery disruptions;

  • Human and social impacts;

  • Environmental impacts;

  • Livelihood impacts;

  • Governance impacts;

  • Recovery requirements;

  • Reconstruction costs; and

  • Disaster-risk-reduction and Build Back Better requirements.

• Assess arrangements for coordination, data validation, quality control, financial estimation, reporting, dissemination, and integration of PDNA findings into recovery and reconstruction planning.

10. PDNA Methodology, Guidelines, and Assessment Process

• Review the availability and application of nationally approved PDNA methodologies, guidelines, templates, sector tools, data standards, and reporting formats.

• Assess the alignment of national methodologies with internationally recognised approaches for damage, loss, human-impact, needs, recovery, and reconstruction assessment.

• Review the full PDNA process, including:

  1. Activation and institutional mobilization;

  2. Assessment scoping and planning;

  3. Formation of sector teams;

  4. Baseline data compilation;

  5. Field data collection;

  6. Damage and loss estimation;

  7. Human-impact and needs assessment;

  8. Recovery-needs identification;

  9. Build Back Better analysis;

  10. Sector prioritization;

  11. Cost estimation;

  12. Validation and quality assurance;

  13. Report preparation;

  14. Government endorsement;

  15. Recovery-framework development; and

  16. Monitoring of recovery implementation.

• Assess the availability and quality of baseline datasets, administrative records, census data, sector inventories, asset databases, land-use data, infrastructure data, household information, market information, and historical disaster-loss databases.

11. ICT, GIS, Remote Sensing, and UAV Capacity for PDNA

• Assess institutional capacity to use digital technologies for rapid and comprehensive post-disaster assessment.

• Review the availability and application of:

  • Mobile data-collection tools;

  • Digital survey applications;

  • Cloud-based assessment platforms;

  • GIS databases;

  • Web-GIS portals;

  • Remote-sensing imagery;

  • Satellite data;

  • Unmanned aerial vehicles;

  • Drone-based imaging;

  • Global positioning systems;

  • Digital elevation models;

  • Image-processing software;

  • Damage-classification tools;

  • Artificial intelligence-assisted analysis;

  • Digital dashboards; and

  • Decision-support systems.

• Assess capacity to acquire, process, analyse, interpret, validate, store, and disseminate geospatial and remote-sensing data.

• Review institutional arrangements for obtaining pre-disaster and post-disaster imagery, including access to satellite imagery, drone operations, aerial surveys, open-source geospatial data, and commercial data providers.

• Assess compliance with UAV regulations, flight permissions, operational safety procedures, data-protection requirements, and ethical standards.

• Review interoperability between field-assessment tools, sector databases, EOC systems, GIS platforms, national statistics systems, and recovery-planning systems.

• Assess capacity to produce:

  • Damage maps;

  • Affected-population maps;

  • Infrastructure-impact maps;

  • Agricultural damage maps;

  • Flood-extent maps;

  • Landslide inventories;

  • Building-damage classifications;

  • Accessibility and logistics maps;

  • Recovery-priority maps; and

  • Spatial recovery-investment plans.

12. Expected Assessment Outputs

The assessment should generate:

• A DRM governance and institutional-capacity assessment report;

• An institutional mandate, coordination, and accountability matrix;

• A technical and human-resource capacity-gap analysis;

• An ICT infrastructure, systems, and data-management assessment;

• An EOC technical, operational, and functional-capacity assessment;

• A risk-informed DRM planning and sector-integration assessment;

• A review of Standing Orders on Disaster and emergency ICT tools;

• A national PDNA capacity and institutional-readiness assessment;

• A PDNA methodology, tools, data, GIS, remote-sensing, and UAV capacity assessment;

• A prioritized institutional strengthening and capacity-development plan;

• Recommendations for legal, policy, institutional, technical, financial, and operational reforms; and

• A phased roadmap for strengthening national and subnational DRM governance, EOC operations, integrated planning, and post-disaster assessment capacity.

This can also be converted into an assessment matrix with indicators, assessment questions, data sources, scoring criteria, identified gaps, and recommended actions.

Please contact MHEWC at: Z M Sajjadul Islam, Advisor of MHEWC.  Email:  zmsajjad@gmail.com, WhatsApp:+88 01711 979179