Mihir Bhatt

Mihir R. Bhatt, PhD, is the director of the All India Disaster Mitigation Institute (AIDMI). He works on reducing risk-related action and learning and is involved with Experience Learning Series onLearning and Risk Mitigation; Southasiadisasters.net; Afat Nivaran (a Gujarati Newsletter) and Vipada Nivaran (a Hindi Newsletter). His writings have been published widely on issues of vulnerability and disasters, and have been part of key evaluations of disaster response in Asia. He is a Senior Fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative since 2007 and was a member of the panel that selects the Humanitarian Coordinators for the United Nations. He has an advisory role in the Climate Development Knowledge Network’s work on climate compatible development in nine states of India with focus on urban resilience, green finance, and renewable energy at subnational level. He was recently invited to join the independent panel of INGO Accountability Charter to review accountability of international civil society.

He chairs Duryog Nivaran, a South Asian network on alternative thinking on disaster risk reduction. He has recently published chapters titled “The Interplay of Women, Work and Disasters: Missing Women’s View” and “Gender, Disasters and Development: Opportunities for South-South Cooperation” in a book named Women and Disasters in South Asia: Survival, Security and Development. He has also published a chapter titled “Using Disaster Insurance to Build Urban Resilience: Lessons from Micro-enterprise” in a book called Urban Disaster Resilience: New Dimensions from International Practice in the Built Environment.