📅 Date: Monday, October 12, 2026
🕓 Time: 04:00 PM to 05:00 PM IST (+05:30 UTC)
Organiser: All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI), India

Registration: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/ro_AMbOcRpWJ6kVH0MYjJA

💬 About the Roundtable

On the occasion of the 2026 International Day for Disaster Risk Reduction, the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI) is organising a virtual roundtable on “Local Innovation to Global Action for Heat, Health, and Livelihoods: Resilience Starts at Home.”

The roundtable will explore how disaster and climate resilience can begin where people live and work. It will focus particularly on extreme heat, home-based livelihoods, women workers, early warning, safer homes, local preparedness, cooling, community leadership, and livelihood protection.

The discussion responds directly to the 2026 IDDRR theme “Resilience Starts at Home.” It will consider how households can become active agents of resilience when they understand their risks, can respond to early warnings, make informed decisions about their homes, and participate in local planning.

📘 Launch of southasiadisasters.net

The roundtable will also mark the launch of a special issue of southasiadisasters.net on “Local Innovation to Global Action for Heat, Health, and Livelihoods: Resilience Starts at Home”.

The issue brings together practical experiences on women and heat, early warning, household resilience, climate education, urban cooling, women-led action, regional cooperation, and livelihood-sensitive heat planning.

🎯 Key Objectives

1. Connect resilience at home with wider disaster risk reduction through safer homes, health protection, livelihood security, preparedness, and locally led action.
2. Promote practical local solutions for extreme heat, including early warning, cooling, safer workspaces, women-led action, and community-based adaptation.
3. Bring local experience into wider policy and practice so that Heat Action Plans, urban planning, public health systems, and disaster risk reduction become more inclusive and actionable.

💬 Key Discussion Areas

1. Resilience Starts at HomeHow can households become safer and better prepared through cooling, water access, health protection, risk awareness, and livelihood security?
2. From Heat Warning to Early ActionHow can forecasts and warnings lead to timely and practical action for women, workers, small businesses, and vulnerable communities?
3. From Local Innovation to Wider ActionHow can community-led and locally tested solutions influence city, state, national, regional, and global disaster risk reduction efforts?

🎤 Speakers

1. Midhila Mallika, Senior Consultant, Recovery & Reconstruction, National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), India
2. Mikiko Tanaka, Director and Head, UNESCAP Subregional Office for South and South-West Asia, India
3. Remya Sasindran, Co-Founder, Words Rhythms Images (WRI), India
4. Pritha Khanal, GESI Specialist, Duryog Nivaran, Nepal
5. Mihir R. Bhatt, All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI), India

📢 Join the conversation on how resilience that starts at home can shape stronger community, city, national, regional, and global action on heat, health, livelihoods, and disaster risk reduction.