The WorldRiskReport for 2022 was released earlier this month, providing an assessment of the risk of disaster across the world.

With digital transformation increasingly influencing our lives in significant ways, this year the focus of the report was ‘digitisation’.

While digitalisation has created new opportunities in all phases of disaster management, this is not without trade-offs and drawbacks. This reality is highlighted by NCHS associates, Beáta Paragi (Associate Professor, Corvinus University of Budapest) and Kristin Bergtora Sandvik (Research Professor, Peace Research Institute Oslo and Professor, University of Oslo) in their chapter for the report on digital risk in disaster situations (from page 24).

This chapter provides an overview of digital risks in disasters, including risks related to the damage to digital infrastructure, digital manipulation and cyberattacks, as well as risks associated with the centralised collection and consolidation of disaster response data and how this impacts accountability and the principle of ‘do no harm’. This chapter contribution forms part of the ‘Do No Harm: Ethical Humanitarian Innovation and Digital Bodies’ led by Sandvik at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).

Published by Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft and the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict (IFHV) at Ruhr University Bochum, the 2022 edition of the WorldRiskReport features an entirely revised WorldRiskIndex, with 100 indicators instead of the previous 27.

“The WorldRiskIndex calculates disaster risk for 193 countries and thus 99 percent of the world’s population.” The 2022 WorldRiskIndex finds that the Philippines, India and Indonesia have the highest risk, followed by Colombia and Mexico.

Other key findings from the report include:

• Nine of the 15 countries with the highest disaster risk are among the 15 most populous countries in the world.
• China has the highest exposure, followed by Mexico and Japan. The most vulnerable country in the world is Somalia, followed by Chad and South Sudan.

Access a copy of the full WorldRiskReport 2022 here.