Fundamentals
What is a Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment?
A structured way for a local government to find out which places, people, and systems are at risk from hazards and a changing climate — and to say so with evidence a plan can act on.
A Climate and Disaster Risk Assessment, usually shortened to CDRA, is an analysis a local government undertakes as part of preparing its land use plan. It asks three questions in order: what hazards can affect this locality, what of value is located where those hazards occur, and how badly would it be affected?
The answers are not a single number. A CDRA produces a set of risk statements — each tied to a place, a sector, and a hazard — that can be argued over in public, checked by a reviewing body, and turned into a map, a zoning provision, or a budget line.
Why local governments do it
The Philippines sits in the path of tropical cyclones and along active fault and volcanic systems, and much urban growth has happened on land that is exposed. Land use planning is the one instrument a local government holds that can change where people and assets end up in the first place. A CDRA is what makes that plan evidence-based rather than aspirational.
It also matters procedurally: a land use plan is reviewed and approved by higher bodies, and the assessment is part of what they look for. Doing it well means the plan survives review and the interventions it proposes can be funded.
What it is not
A CDRA is not a hazard map. Hazard maps are an input. It is not a disaster response plan either — response and contingency planning deal with what happens during an event, while a CDRA deals with what the locality chooses to build, protect, or avoid over the next decade.
The vocabulary
Six terms do most of the work. Getting them straight makes the rest of the process much easier to follow.
- Hazard
- A process or event that can cause harm — flooding, landslide, storm surge, severe wind, drought, earthquake.
- Exposure
- The people, buildings, facilities, lifelines, and natural resources located where a hazard can occur.
- Sensitivity
- How badly an exposed element is affected when the hazard occurs — a light-material house is more sensitive than a concrete one.
- Adaptive capacity
- The resources, systems, and skills available to cope and recover — drainage, early warning, funds, trained personnel.
- Vulnerability
- Sensitivity weighed against adaptive capacity. High sensitivity with low capacity means high vulnerability.
- Risk
- The likelihood of the hazard combined with the consequence for the exposed and vulnerable element.
- Decision area
- A specific place-and-issue combination that the plan has to decide something about.
The relationship in one line
Risk = Hazard × Exposure × Vulnerability, where Vulnerability = Sensitivity ÷ Adaptive capacity
In practice these are not precise arithmetic terms but rated classes that are combined using a scoring matrix. Remove any one factor and risk falls: no exposure in a hazard zone means no risk there, and strong adaptive capacity lowers risk even when the hazard cannot be changed.
CDRA Philippines is an independent educational module of SmartCity.ph. It is not an official application of DHSUD, USAID, PAGASA, or any other government agency, and it is not endorsed by them. Official documents referenced here identify their issuing agency and link back to the original source. All municipal figures, maps, and risk scores shown in the demo are fictional.