Disaster Information Networks: A Comparative study for proposing Iran DIN

Disasters all around the world are causing human and property loss every year, the vulnerability of developing countries to natural disasters is more than developed countries in term of GNP. It is based on Tucker et al. (1994, as cited by Montoya, 2002) who highlights the earthquake caused fiscal losses, represent a greater percentage of the GNP of developing countries than of developed countries. During the last 5 years, disasters such as September 11, 2001 attacks to the World Trade Center, Bush Fires in Australia, Bam Earthquake, and Tsunami in South Asia made countries pay more attention to their disaster management programs. There are four phases in disaster management, namely mitigation, preparedness, response and recovery. Information has a key role in each of these phases, while optimum planning and decision making is not reachable unless reliable and up-to-date information can be accessed by disaster managers. With this in mind, a Disaster Information Network (DIN) can be considered as a good means to exchange information and practices among disaster management community. Using this network, managers can access required information at any time and in any location they are. The importance of such a network would be highlighted, if dynamic characteristic of disasters and their sensibility to time to be considered as well. More than 80% of the information required for disaster management has spatial nature or component (Cutter2003, Lemmens2001, Budice&Pinto1999, Rhind1999); so DINs need to have the capability of storing, managing and exchanging spatial data. However, currently, DINs have usually a role of exchanging general information such as experiences of different countries on disaster management activities, statistical information of previous disasters, workshops and conferences announcements or/and linking relevant websites to each other; meanwhile, less attention has been paid on spatial data exchange in DINs. Historically, the potential for reducing disaster costs through better application of information technology to disaster management was emphasized in 1984 in a report released by the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight of USA (U.S. Congress House, 1984 as cited by Mansourian, 2005). Later on, various DINs have been created at the national level (such as AusDIN, US-DIN), regional level (like ADRC, CARDIN) and global level (GDIN). Each of these networks has their own strong and weakness points for disaster management, with less attention to spatial data. In this paper some of the present DINs at the national, regional and global levels have been reviewed and their performance for disaster management purposes have been investigated. By studying the strong and weakness points of these DINs, a proper DIN has been suggested for Iran. In this suggestion particular emphasis would be on the capability of DINs for spatial data exchange.

کلیدواژه ها:

disasters management ، DIN ، spatial data