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Pacific Disaster Center's Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities Atlases are powerful decision support toolsets for disaster management and humanitarian assistance organizations in Hawaii and the Asia Pacific region.

1. Asia Pacific Edition
2. Hawaii Edition

The Asia Pacific Edition allows users to view hazards at a regional scale and on a more local scale throughout the region. It includes information such as population, major roads, waterways, cities, regional boundaries, and various risk information layers.

The Hawaii Edition contains much more detailed information pertaining only to the State of Hawaii. Layers in this edition include detailed weather forecasts, fire stations, police stations, flood zones, detailed infrastructure, satellite imagery, and many more.

The Asia Pacific Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities Atlas combines baseline geographic and infrastructure data layers with historical and near-real time data on natural hazard events including earthquakes, wildfires, tsunamis, volcanoes and tropical storms. The Hawaii Natural Hazards and Vulnerabilities Atlas offers unique local-level hazard data including lava flows, FEMA flood zones, tsunami evacuation zones, coastal hazards, and hazardous dams. These hazards can be viewed alongside critical infrastructure to determine risk.

More than half the world's population lives in the Asia Pacific area on about one-fifth of the earth's land. As natural disasters increase in both intensity and severity around the world, the Asia Pacific region continues to suffer a disproportionate number of hazard events and related losses of lives, infrastructure, stability and economic progress. In 2006 alone, there were 457 significant natural disasters in the world (up from about 125 in 1975) and 187 of them, over 40 percent, took place in Asia. In that same year, over 88 percent of those adversely affected by natural disasters and nearly 60 percent of those killed were in Asia.

PDC's Atlases can be used by emergency management officials to develop a clearer understanding of the current hazards and risks. (Image: PDC)

Governments and organizations charged with disaster management are seeking innovative and comprehensive decision support systems, as well as better information and easier access to information about past, present and potential disasters. Pacific Disaster Center's Atlases answer these needs.

These Atlases contain information on major hazards, both "active" and "historical," including tropical cyclones, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, and wildfires. They provide decision makers with the needed geospatial context for assessing risks and communicating about natural hazards and the exposure that people and infrastructure have to these hazards. They support the entire range of the disaster management "life cycle" from hazard assessment, to early warning, to response and recovery operations.

Pacific Disaster Center's Natural Hazards Atlases can aid in answering questions such as:

• What hazards are likely to occur in a given region?
• How often will they occur and how intense will they be?
• Where are the current hazard events and what areas have they impacted?
• How many people might be affected?
• What is the potential impact on regional infrastructure?

What's New in the current versions of the PDC Atlases?

Source of cited statistics: CRED/EM-DAT, Catholic University of Louvain, Brussels, Belgium, 2006.