Effective disaster risk reduction management is critical to sustainable development. Science has a key role to play in helping us to better understand disaster risks and developing more robust DRR approaches. It can help us to better predict and respond to a range of natural hazards such as floods and storms, droughts, extreme temperatures, health epidemics and pandemics. The new framework will help encourage greater engagement from and with the scientific community in order to reduce disaster risk and build resilience. British scientists already play a significant role in helping the UK prepare for and respond to disasters. While we expect British scientists and institutions to play an important role, we are still assessing the full implications of the Sendai Framework.