Pre-Stored Data Vital For Mitigating Natural Disasters, UN Reports
New York, Dec 16 2008 5:10PM
With climate change likely to increase both the frequency and severity of natural disasters, the United Nations today
launched guidelines to help States pre-emptively amass the data vital for effective relief operations to avoid
compounding the original catastrophe.
“So that these natural hazards do not become man-made disasters, we require effective systems to identify needs, manage
data, and help calibrate responses,” UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes and World Bank Vice
President Danny Leipziger said in a forward to Data Against Natural Disasters, a book launched jointly by their offices.
“Such systems, if well designed, can help coordinate the influx of aid to ensure timely and efficient delivery of
assistance to those who need help most. The emphasis on aid effectiveness is particularly important in the context of
disaster response because, as is now clear, vulnerability to natural disasters and inefficiencies in aid distribution
may lead to unnecessary economic losses, increased suffering, and greater poverty.”
Based on case studies from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami in Indonesia and Sri Lanka, recent hurricanes and floods in
Guatemala, Haiti and Mozambique and the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan, the book concludes that information management
systems are a critical element for effective response based on good technological platforms with the necessary software.
Baseline information must be collected on communities, services and infrastructure, even the names and locations of
rural communities in areas where accurate maps, technical capacity and shared languages are in short supply. In
Pakistan, for example, different villages often have the same name in public records and the name of an individual
village might vary across documents.
“Baseline data should be assembled in advance as part of the process of becoming prepared for disaster. Much of the
information will be scattered across separate record and documentation systems at various government agencies. The
technical barriers to collecting and consolidating this information are likely to be significant, but they may be more
easily surmounted outside the context of an emergency,” the book stresses.
“Ad hoc responses hastily assembled in the aftermath of a disaster are not equal to the task. Major investment is needed
to build permanent response capacity in countries and across the world,” it says, citing numerous challenges in
information management from tracking displaced and vulnerable people and logging damage to housing, infrastructure and
services to dealing with the sudden influx of aid and coordinating the work of a plethora of responding agencies.
Search and rescue operations, evacuations, and care for victims of trauma all must be planned and coordinated. “In
emergencies, improvements in efficiency translate quickly into more saved lives,” the book states, underlining the
importance of regular investment in national disaster information management systems.
“Perhaps the most important lesson that emerges from the experiences documented in this volume is that investments in
disaster information management systems are far more likely to be effective if they are accomplished in advance,” the
book stresses in conclusion.
“Most of the systems described in the case studies were developed or deployed in the aftermath of the onset of major
disasters. Many of the problems they faced flowed directly from this fact. In the midst of a major disaster, the
prospects of anchoring the system on a stable institutional foundation and supporting it through sound operating
procedures are diminished.”
ENDS