Rapid population growth and urbanization combined with extreme climatic events are causing a rapid increase in vulnerability of communities exposed to hazardous events. As a result, disasters are increasingly taking heavy toll of life and property. Unplanned growth both in urban and non-urban areas calls for an adequate preparation to reduce the impact of disasters. There is a great need to utilize disaster risk information in planning for effective coping mechanisms of disaster risk reduction.
Disaster risk information is spatial in nature and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) play an important role in disaster risk assessment and management. For this, there is a significant need to create awareness among the disaster management professionals regarding the importance of GIS usage.
The new curriculum of GIS4DRM course has been re-designed jointly by the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC), the Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), the Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente, the Netherlands (ITC), and the United Nations Institute for Training and Researchs Operational Satellite Applications Program (UNITAR-UNOSAT), with its main aim to provide an overview of the use of spatial information in Disaster Risk Management. The course not only reveals what spatial data is and how it is collected, but also emphasize on the use of such spatial data during pre- and post-disaster management such as during early warning, hazard, vulnerability and risk assessment, damage assessment, as well as in the design of risk reduction measures. The course ultimately hopes that scientific advancement can be utilized for better disaster risk reduction practices.
Course Content:
Module 1: Basic Information
Module 2: Post-Disaster impact and Damage Analysis
Module 3: Pre-Disaster Risk Assessment
Module 4: Risk Information for Risk Reduction Planning