Abstract
Abstract. With growing world population and concentration in urban and coastal areas, the exposure to natural hazards is increasing and results in higher risk of human and economic losses. Improving the identification of areas, population and assets potentially exposed to natural hazards is essential to reduce the consequences of such events. Disaster risk is a function of hazard, exposure and vulnerability. Modelling risk at the global level requires accessing and processing a large number of data, from numerous collaborating centres. These data need to be easily updated, and there is a need for centralizing access to this information as well as simplifying its use for non GIS specialists. The Hyogo Framework for Action provides the mandate for data sharing, so that governments and international development agencies can take appropriate decision for disaster risk reduction. Timely access and easy integration of geospatial data are essential to support efforts in Disaster Risk Reduction. However various issues in data availability, accessibility and integration limit the use of such data. In consequence, a framework that facilitate sharing and exchange of geospatial data on natural hazards should improve decision-making process. The PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform is a highly interactive web-based GIS portal supported by a Spatial Data Infrastructure that offers free and interoperable access to more than 60 global data sets on nine types of natural hazards (tropical cyclones and related storm surges, drought, earthquakes, biomass fires, floods, landslides, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions) and related exposure and risk. This application portrays an easy-to-use online interactive mapping interface so that users can easily work with it and seamlessly integrate data in their own data flow using fully compliant OGC Web Services (OWS).
Highlights
The Hyogo Framework for action, priority two, states that “The starting point for reducing disaster risk and for promoting a culture of disaster resilience lies in the knowledge of the hazards and the physical, social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities to disasters [. . . ] followed by action taken on the basis of that knowledge”
Open Geospatial Consortium5 (OGC) web services module: this module offers for each web service (WMS, Web Feature Service (WFS), Web Coverage Service (WCS), KML and GeoRSS), the Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) of the selected service to use in desktop clients and the URL generator for web-mapping application
This paper presented the PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform and described the potential usefulness of a geoportal to facilitate and coordinate data sharing, access and use among different partners
Summary
The Hyogo Framework for action, priority two, states that “The starting point for reducing disaster risk and for promoting a culture of disaster resilience lies in the knowledge of the hazards and the physical, social, economic and environmental vulnerabilities to disasters [. . . ] followed by action taken on the basis of that knowledge”. With the availability of new data and more powerful computational capacity, a major improvement of these datasets was carry on by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP/GRID-Europe), United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR), Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) amongst others This include the generation of new data sets for hazards distribution (cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, floods, biomass fires, landslides and tsunamis) with different intensities, computation of the human and economical exposures and computation of risk for cyclones, floods, earthquakes and landslides. This paper aims to describe the development of the webbased geoportal called PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform (replacing PREVIEW-IMS) together with its associated SDI to support and facilitate geospatial data discovery, accessibility, visualization, and dissemination regarding past hazardous events, human and economical exposure, as well as risk maps from natural hazards This application can be accessed at http//:preview.grid.unep.ch
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
