Tech & Software
Disaster response planning around the globe
By Peter Slater, Engineering, Fathom
technology and high-quality data to provide informed decision making that can help communities respond to natural disasters. Here are just two examples: one around the creation of an integrated digital twin encompassing the UK’s critical infrastructure, to plan and invest in climate change adaptation and resilience matters. The other looks at catastrophic flood risk in Tajikistan and Zimbabwe, to help the UN protect vulnerable communities against food shortages. Tajikistan and Zimbabwe Flooding can severely restrict food supply in low-income countries. It destroys crops and food stores, kills livestock, obstructs supply routes, and leads to higher food prices. The UN World Food Program (WFP), the world’s largest humanitarian organization, contracted flood mapping platform Floodbase to supply emergency flood analytics for countries affected by food
Why does it take so long to deliver national infrastructure? Lets take, for example, a new port on the Mediterranean coastline. Any change to the natural and built environment has a significant impact on its local surrounding, not just commercially and environmentally, but practically too. Is there sufficient power in the grid to meet this new demand? Can the local transport infrastructure handle the increase in transit? What about the hospitals? The sewers? The list goes on. Poor planning leads to, well, poor performance. A new port at standstill due to traffic, left idle with intermittent power or temporarily closed to deal with an unforeseen environmental impact is not just embarrassing to those involved, it can–and does–cause injury and death. So thousands of experts spend years undertaking investigations to ensure every possible mitigation can be put in place to ensure a smooth construction and operation. But what about when a port floods? With no warning, huge changes take place; power goes out, transport shuts down, hospitals become
insecurity. Many countries participating in the WFP are at heightened risk of food shortage because they lack local flood data. To provide reliable, consistent flood alerts regardless of data scarcity, Fathom’s modeled risk data is supplementing earth observation (satellite) data and hydrometeorological data. WFP needed reliable data to understand where flooding is occurring in real time and where catastrophic floods are likely to strike in the future. This intelligence enables them to deliver food and funds to at-risk communities quickly in emergency situations. It also allows for the prioritization of repair to assets contributing to long-term food security, such as water harvesting systems. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) of people in Zimbabwe live below the poverty line and the country ranks 108th of 119 in IFPRI’s 2017
inaccessible. In an ideal world, we would have the same thousands of experts and years of time to plan all conceivable permutations of the disaster to develop an appropriate disaster response plan. However, natural disasters are very hard to predict. This makes it a significant challenge to allocate the equivalent time and resource into planning for natural disasters as one might do for the supporting infrastructure systems that are consistently in demand. So where does this leave us? For the most part, it’s an uncomfortable lottery, in which disaster could strike communities that have only been allocated minimal preparation for the management of the consequences of such events. However, there are numerous projects going on around the world tackling this, using advanced
Chidodo Cyclone Ana Event Map - Mbire District January 27th, 2022 (31.0920,-16.0143)
January 27th, 2022
SkySat Extent
Flood
Imagery: Skysat January 27th, 2022 Data: Cloud To Street 2022 Basemap: © OpenStreetMap contributors
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