Recent Progress Achieved by the Global Centre for Disaster Statistics (GCDS)

Abstract

This study aims to clarify the recent progress made by the Global Centre for Disaster Statistics (GCDS) as presented at the GCDS session of the World Bosai Forum/International Disaster Risk Conference 2019 (WBF2019) and the subsequent expert meeting and to discuss the next step for the GCDS. The authors also attempt to grasp the position of the GCDS among the disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities worldwide to find a clue for evaluating the recent progress made by the GCDS so far. First, the authors describe a fact regarding the session and the expert meeting followed by an observation focusing on their output in a qualitative manner. Second, the authors adopt a text mining technique to position the GCDS in relation to the other global DRR activities. The results suggest that the GCDS has steadily progressed in its activities, which were evaluated positively by the stakeholders at the GCDS session of the WBF2019 and the subsequent expert meeting. At the same time, some new challenges that the GCDS should cope with in the coming years were pointed out. Furthermore, the results of text mining that examined the corpora composed of the descriptions regarding the Sendai Framework Voluntary Commitments (SFVCs) of the global DRR activities support the notion that the GCDS has been conducting its activities in a relatively common and less biased manner, which are also aligned with the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR). Thus, it can be concluded that the GCDS should keep moving forward with the current momentum that has contributed to the achievement of the recent progress.