Archive for the tag 'China'

Using technology to save lives

admin November 11th, 2009

We’ve written here before about the role that planning, data analysis and prediction can play in reducing the impact of natural disasters.

The EM-DAT database (a WHO initiative) is a huge repository of information about disasters that has been built up over more than 40 years, and Advance Aid has already been mining this data to help develop its business plan – if you can use historical data to predict where disasters are most likely to happen, you can certainly fine-tune your pre-positioning and warehousing strategy.

Now SciDevNet has produced a whole section of its website devoted to covering “Remote Sensing for Natural Disasters” .

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Natural disasters drive 36m people from their homes in 2008

admin September 25th, 2009

The numbers of people displaced around the world – either by natural disasters or by man-made disasters like wars – is mind-boggling.

And whilst our attention here in the North is grabbed from time to time by a particularly newsworthy disaster, which affects a particularly large number of people, the scale of the ongoing displacements is what should be being noted.

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