Letter to UNDRR offering Reseated days‑to‑reopen data as a contribution to the Sendai Framework review

Letter — Circulated

To the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction

Letter to UNDRR offering Reseated days-to-reopen data as a contribution to the Sendai Framework review

Dear colleagues at the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction,

We write on behalf of the Resilience Council of Reseated, the Resilience Council Chair, and its rapporteur. We offer our developing evidence on small-business disruption and recovery as a practical contribution to work concerning the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030. In particular, we would welcome a conversation about how anonymized owner-reported evidence can help describe the time required for a small business to reopen after a disaster.

We are writing from an early stage of evidence-gathering. We do not present our current records as representative of all small businesses, all countries, or all disaster events. Nor do we claim that the aggregate information currently available to us provides a complete or validated days-to-reopen measure. We set out below what our records do show, what they do not yet establish, and how we propose to work with UNDRR to make a useful and responsible contribution.

1. Who we are and our mandate

Reseated is a global assembly of small-business owners, organized in seven councils. It launched on 10 February 2026 and is a nonprofit. Its Founders Assembly is intended to give owners a structured way to report recurring

problems, examine whether reports show a pattern, develop proposed responses, consult publicly, and bring adopted proposals to the people and institutions able to act.

The Resilience Council considers the conditions that enable a small business to withstand disruption, maintain or restore operations, and recover after a shock. Its agenda item RS-001, “Reopen Standard,” concerns timely decisions on insurance claims, access to bridge funding following a declared disaster, and continuity-planning support for micro businesses. These are proposed areas of work, not claims that every business has the same needs or that a single intervention will suit every setting.

As of 18 May 2026, Reseated had 688 members in 49 countries and had received 1,770 reports from 50 countries across its councils. The Resilience Council had 57 members from 35 countries. These figures describe participation in a developing assembly and reporting system; they should not be read as a statistically representative survey of the global business population.

Our evidence process is designed to distinguish a report from a demonstrated pattern. The Assembly’s five-part pattern test considers volume, frequency, consistency, spread, and corroboration. Findings may inform a draft response, but a draft is subject to consultation and an Assembly ballot before it becomes an adopted standard or a basis for letters to decision-makers. We offer the present evidence in that spirit: as a contribution for examination and improvement, not as a finding that forecloses discussion.

2. Why reopening evidence matters

Disaster recovery is often described through damage, losses, or the restoration of public infrastructure. Those measures are important. For a small-business owner, however, the practical question is also whether the business can resume trading, retain its team, meet obligations, and serve

its customers while the surrounding community recovers. A business may be physically accessible but unable to reopen because it lacks working capital, replacement equipment, a functioning supply route, or a decision on a claim. A record of these experiences may help complement broader measures of impact.

UNDRR materials state that small and medium-sized enterprises bear approximately 75 per cent of business disaster losses, and that disaster risk reduction can reduce losses by up to one third.¹ The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 refers to integrating business continuity into business practice, including for micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, in paragraphs 30(o) and 36(c).² These points make continuity and recovery relevant to our council’s work. We offer a small-business reporting perspective that may help explore how such commitments are experienced in practice.

We do not infer from those policy commitments that UNDRR has adopted any particular position on a days-to-reopen indicator, or that a specific review process is currently open. We address this letter to your office because our subject is disaster risk reduction and the implementation of the Sendai Framework. We would be grateful for guidance on the appropriate channel, timing, and technical requirements for any contribution.

3. Evidence available as of 18 May 2026

The Resilience Council had received 19 reports from 16 countries. The median reported amount at stake was approximately US$6,868. The recorded situation for all 19 reports was disaster. Fifteen reports had been filed in the 30 days preceding this snapshot. These are counts of reports received by the Council, not counts of unique disaster events, affected communities, or businesses across the world.

The reports came from owners with different team sizes. In the current Council summary, 42 per cent reported a team size of “Just me,” 32 per cent reported two to nine people, and 26 per cent reported 10 to 49 people. This distribution is relevant to our focus on micro businesses and small teams, but the sample is small and does not support conclusions about the prevalence of these team sizes in any country or sector.

The countries with the highest report counts in the available summary were Germany, Japan, and the Netherlands, with two reports each. The Philippines, Mexico, Argentina, Chile, and Spain had one report each. The summary identifies 16 countries in total; the country counts listed here are the leading entries provided in that summary, not a complete country-by-country table. We do not infer the unlisted country counts or identify any individual reporter.

The Council’s current aggregate information does not include a reported median or distribution for days to reopen. It also does not provide a sector-by-sector breakdown, a common definition of “reopened,” or a verified timeline for each report. We will not present a days-to-reopen figure where our current data do not establish one. Our offer is therefore twofold: to discuss whether the existing anonymized records can contribute useful qualitative evidence about reopening barriers, and to work toward a carefully defined, consent-based measure of days to reopen as future records permit.

That distinction matters. A measure of elapsed days can be misleading unless it is clear what starts the clock, what counts as reopening, and whether partial trading is included. A business may resume limited operations before returning to normal capacity; another may reopen at a temporary site. The owner’s account may also distinguish the date of physical access from the date of the first sale or the date the business could operate sustainably. We would welcome technical advice on how to record such differences without flattening them into a misleading single number.

4. Requests to UNDRR

We respectfully invite UNDRR to consider the following practical steps:

1. Please advise us on the appropriate office or technical channel for submitting small-business evidence relevant to the Sendai Framework, including any guidance on format, timing, and standards for a contribution.

2. Please consider a technical discussion with the Resilience Council on definitions for a days-to-reopen measure. We suggest beginning with distinct dates, where available: the date of the disruptive event; the date the owner can first access the business site; the date any part of the business resumes trading; and the date the owner considers operations sufficiently restored. These are suggestions for discussion, not a claim that the Council already collects each field consistently.

3. Please advise what minimum information is needed to interpret reopening time responsibly. In our view, a useful record should, where the owner can provide it safely, distinguish partial from full reopening and describe relevant barriers such as premises, utilities, equipment, working capital, insurance decisions, or supply access. We would value advice on how to avoid collecting information that is unnecessary or could expose an owner to risk.

4. Please consider whether owner-reported evidence from micro and small businesses could complement existing disaster-loss and continuity information. We are not asking that these 19 reports be treated as representative or that they be combined with other datasets without appropriate methods. We are asking whether a transparent, appropriately qualified small-business evidence stream can add practical detail about recovery.

5. Please identify safeguards and methodological expectations for any future exchange: consent, anonymization, data minimization, secure handling, clear limitations, and a process for correcting or withdrawing a record where appropriate. We would not transfer identifiable member information without explicit authorization and an agreed basis for doing so.

6. Please let us know whether UNDRR would welcome a short technical note from the Council setting out a proposed data dictionary and a pilot approach. If useful, the note could distinguish observed facts from owner estimates, record missing values explicitly, and report the number and geographic coverage of records alongside any summary statistic.

5. Offer of anonymized data

We are prepared to discuss an anonymized extract of the aggregate information summarized in this letter and to consider whether any further record-level material can be shared safely and lawfully. Any exchange would be subject to member consent, privacy safeguards, and a clear agreement on purpose and handling. We would not disclose names, contact details, business names, precise locations, or other identifying details as part of a general evidence contribution.

We propose that an initial exchange focus on definitions and data quality rather than on a headline number. Before offering any calculated time-to-reopen statistic, we would need to establish which reports contain usable dates, whether those dates mean the same thing across reports, how missing or uncertain dates are treated, and whether the resulting group is large and varied enough to summarize responsibly. If those conditions are not met, we will say so plainly and limit the contribution to the information the records can support.

We also recognize that the 19-report Resilience Council dataset is very small. Its value at this stage lies in showing the type of owner-reported information being assembled and the questions that arise when recovery is

viewed from the perspective of the business. It is not a basis for estimating global reopening times, comparing countries, ranking disaster responses, or attributing outcomes to a particular institution or policy.

6. Closing

Small businesses are part of the economic and social life of the communities affected by disasters. Their continuity and recovery deserve evidence that is specific enough to be useful and careful enough not to overstate what is known. We hope that a constructive exchange with UNDRR can help us improve our methods and make future owner-reported evidence more comparable, interpretable, and safe to use.

Annex: sources and records referenced

1. UNDRR, “Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices of small and medium-sized enterprises.” External source for the stated estimate concerning SMEs’ share of business disaster losses and potential loss reduction through disaster risk reduction.

2. UNDRR, “Resilience of SMEs” report. External source for the Sendai Framework references cited in this letter and the Japan METI survey finding noted in the Resilience Council’s background materials. The survey finding is not used to characterize Reseated members or the 19 reports described above.

3. Reseated, RC/RS/2026/1, Call for evidence: Resilience Council agenda item RS-001, 10 February 2026.

4. Reseated Resilience Council internal aggregate snapshot, 18 May 2026. The counts and distributions in section 3 are stated as supplied in that snapshot.

Notes and sources

Sources

1. UNDRR, Supporting disaster risk reduction and resilience practices of small and medium-sized enterprises
2. UNDRR, Resilience of SMEs report