The Disaster Management Tool (DMT) is a mobile field system that allows field workers and control center officers to interactively enter and retrieve information about the areas of interest. It uses sensors (like GPS receivers) for automatic data collection. It also allows an easy and fast flow of the situation information, also across organizational and jurisdictional boundaries. And finally, it provides dynamic and interactive situation maps and reliable data storage.
The basic idea of the DMT training, which was attended by one UN-SPIDER expert, was to explore opportunities for a follow-up pilot project together with the Institute for Communication and Navigation (IKN) at DLR and the Italian NGO: Cooperazione Internazionale – COOPI, UN-SPIDER’s partner within the Disaster Preparedness programme in the South East African and South West Indian Ocean (DIPECHO), funded by the European Commission - Humanitarian Aid & Civil Protection (ECHO). The envisaged content of a pilot project within the DIPECHO framework could be to initialise a disaster management exercise by using the DMT system against the background of a disaster scenario in Malawi.
