ABSTRACT
Abstract: The increasing amount of public domain and open content global geographic data along with the availability of near real-time physical data on natural hazards allows the development of numerical and geographic models that can calculate the likely humanitarian impact of disastrous events. Consequence analysis is typically performed with a risk formula combining the magnitude of a hazard with an element at risk (such as the amount of people in the affected area) and a vulnerability factor accounting for physical and socioeconomic resilience of the affected area. While consequence analysis models have been used for years on local scales, their application on the global scale required for humanitarian disasters has been restricted by a lack of data. This chapter describes how this has changed and uses the Global Disaster Alert and Coordination System (GDACS) as an example. GDACS, jointly developed by the European Commission and the United Nations, combines existing Web-based disaster information management systems with the aim to alert the international community in case of major sudden-onset disasters and to facilitate the coordination of international response during the relief phase of the disaster. This system shows that it is feasible to provide global disaster alerts based on consequence analysis models. In addition, such models can produce valuable information for decision making, such as reports on affected areas, expected damage, logistics, critical infrastructure nearby, potential secondary effects, and weather forecasts. This, in turn, can be combined with other public domain or open content information related to a particular disaster such as media reports, field observations, and satellite-based damage maps.
