Volume 3, Issue 1

March 2008

PDC Highlights

Dangerous high winds and storms that produced flooding, affected Maui late last year, with recovery efforts going well into 2008. PDC worked with a broad coalition of county, state and federal agencies to conduct physical assessments of the damage to help manage the recovery. More information about statewide recovery work is on PDC's website. (Image: PDC)

Major Workshop in Vietnam

PDC's collaboration with the Government of Vietnam was advanced by the completion of several stages of work aimed at enhancing the country's ability to mitigate the effects of often-devastating annual flooding. In connection with these projects, notably including the development of a new Vietnam map viewer, meetings were held with various offices of the Government of Vietnam and with top officials of the Water Resources University of Vietnam. PDC also organized and presented a Workshop on International "Best Practices" in Disaster Management: Disaster Risk Assessment and Early Warning Systems in Hanoi in November. The workshop was attended by nearly 100 people from at least six countries. It is expected that, in the coming year, this longstanding relationship will involve at least one major new project, the creation of a Vietnamese Flood Decision Support Platform.

Making Hawaii Safer

PDC's Hawaii Resource Information System for Coastal Hazards (HI RISC) was continued for a second year, under NOAA's Pacific Region Integrated Data Enterprise (PRIDE) program. The system was developed to support risk and hazard mitigation activities in the Pacific region. A second release of the application was made available in October, incorporating additional key datasets and functionality to support assessments of coastal and inland flooding and wildfires in the region. The project greatly increases the opportunities to exercise vigilance in protecting the coastal zones of the main, inhabited Hawaiian islands.

Milestone in Southeast Asia

The Online Southeast Asia Disaster Inventory (OSADI) platform was formally launched in October during 10th meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM) in Singapore. The platform was jointly developed as part of the PDC/ASEAN Collaboration Program. PDC also provided training to the representatives from the 10 Member Countries at the Singapore Civil Defense Academy on October 23. Since 2004, PDC has been working collaboratively with ACDM to develop a regional Disaster Information Sharing and Communications Network (DISCNet). This ACDM "priority project" aims to facilitate regional collaboration and disaster information sharing as well as enhanced regional disaster readiness and mitigation. The launch of OSADI was a major milestone that followed an earlier success in assessing Information and Communications Technology (ICT) capabilities in 2005. Additional tasks are being detailed for future collaboration.

Increasing PDC Capabilities

Considering increased interest in the PDC's disaster risk services for an expanded geography, the Center's Global Hazards/Global Risk And Notification Data (GRAND) Project is an effort to enlarge the scope of data holdings from Asia Pacific regional to global. In the last quarter of 2007, more than 100 global mapping and risk-related datasets of potential value to the project were identified. This strategic project is intended to support humanitarian assistance and disaster reduction operations around the world and to facilitate the sharing of disaster information.

Collaboration with APCSS

PDC and Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) joined forces to develop an Asia Pacific disaster risk assessment tool incorporating national-level socio-economic indicators for "trends and shock" analysis. Based on the PDC's DisasterAWARE platform, the project is expected to fill some of the key gaps in decision-aid and communication tools for humanitarian assistance and disaster reduction operations. PDC is supplying the technical expertise in risk assessment and tools, while APCSS is assisting with evaluation of socio-economic indicators. A prototype is expected in early 2008.