The growing awareness of the impact of natural disasters on human communities has also raised awareness of the need for better measurements and models of vulnerability to disasters and for improved management of information that guides the humanitarian response. A collaboration to develop an integrated approach to disaster assessment will enhance the understanding of vulnerability and provide information for decision making in the post-disaster context. The principal partners in this collaboration are the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health (CRDR/JHU), and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University.
This collaboration is a multidisciplinary approach to vulnerability and disaster assessment that brings together the fields of physical science, demography, public health, and informatics. The research will develop the means by which spatial dependencies and interactions between population and environmental variables can be described and studied using GIS models, available socio-demographic information, and data from field surveys of disaster-affected areas with the dual objectives of assessing the risk of populations to natural disasters, and providing information on affected populations to decision makers in the post-disaster relief and rehabilitation environment. In terms of the broader results of the research, modeling population vulnerability and risk in natural disasters, using those models in conjunction with post-disaster assessments of surviving populations, and presenting clear visual representations of disaster risk and impact on populations, will enable governments and humanitarian organizations to make more informed decisions in terms of how to locate need and allocate resources in the aftermath of disasters.
