Supporting decision-making: external specialists

The formulation of a disaster mitigation strategy - deciding whether floods are more important than cyclones, what emphasis should be given to raising public awareness as against strengthening key facilities, what type of management and administrative structure is most appropriate to implement the project - has to be made by the community affected. International assistance can best help those decisions to be made by increasing the capability and expertise of the decision-makers.

Decision-support and technology transfer is offered by a number of United Nations agencies that execute technical cooperation projects. Technical cooperation projects provide international consultants, training and focused activities in a number of areas. Profiles of a number of United Nations agencies that are commonly involved in disaster mitigation projects are given in Annex 1. The types of projects they run, their focus and mandates are different for each agency, but areas of overlap exist and many of the large projects have input from several agencies, through inter-agency agreements. Sample projects are given to illustrate past experience of agencies, and the types of projects that can be expected of them.