3. Collection and Dissemination of Disaster Information

3. Collection and Dissemination of Disaster
Information
ADRC has been disseminating a wide range of information related to disaster risk reduction on
its website (http://www.adrc.asia) aiming at ensuring appropriate disaster response, mitigation, andpreparedness activities.

3-1. Disaster Risk Reduction Activities of MemberCountries
With assistance from its 30 member countries, ADRC has been collecting information on systems,plans, and specific measures of each country’s disaster risk reduction as well as the situation ofnatural disasters. ADRC has also been collecting information from related materials, variouscountries/organizations and through Visiting Researchers from the ADRC member countries andUNOCHA Office in Kobe.
ADRC will continue collecting and sharing information on the following items mainly:
1) Disaster management systems (legal frameworks, organizations, basic plans, and disastermanagement manuals), 2) Experiences of disaster response, and 3) Information on natural disasters(descriptions of natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, cyclones, etc., and resulting damages).

3-1-1. Information Collection from Member Countries
In fiscal year 2017, as in the previous year, ADRC collected disaster risk reduction-related
information on member countries through the following methods.
(1) Information provided from ADRC Member Countries
Besides the voluntary provision from the member countries, ADRC collected theinformation on systems, plans, and specific measures of each country’s disaster reduction as
well as situations of ongoing natural disasters through Visiting Researchers (VR).
(2) Collecting Information through Participation in International Conferences
ADRC has been working to collect disaster risk reduction-related information about current
status, challenges, policies, actions and others in related countries and organizations. ADRC
held, in particular, the Asian Conference on Disaster Reduction 2017 in Baku, Azerbaijan,
October 2017. And ADRC had been working to provide and share the information such as
national or local DRR strategies on implementation of the Sendai Framework, the effective
emergency response to survive mega disasters and advanced technologies facilitating DRR andclimate change adaptation.
(3) Utilization of Internet
Taking advantage of internet, ADRC has been collecting disaster related information
efficiently. Internet will be more important to facilitate technical support and construct disaster
information databases. Internet also helps ADRC to collect related information provided by9

academic research institutions and international organizations. Recently, ADRC has using
Facebook as one of major social network services for providing latest activities of Visiting
Researchers. In fiscal year 2017, ADRC continued gathering information on disaster risk
reduction systems of member countries through requesting information, field surveys,international conferences, and internet. Furthermore, ADRC updated country reports incooperation with Visiting Researchers.
Table 3-1-1lists the reports provided by counterparts in member countries. All these reports
are made available on ADRC website. Over recent years, disaster risk management
organizations in many countries have been actively promoting information dissemination on
the internet. ADRC website developed direct links to these websites which offer access to thelatest information.
Table.3-1-1. List of reports from ADRC member countries
Country

Year prepared

Armenia

2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017

Azerbaijan

2011, 2014

Bangladesh

1998, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2010, 2011, 2013

Bhutan2008, 2013, 2014, 2017

Cambodia

1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2013

China

1998, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2012

India

1998, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2012, 2015

Indonesia

1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2012, 2016

Iran2013

Japan

1998, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2012

Kazakhstan

1998, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2006

Korea

1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008

Kyrgyzstan

2005, 2006, 2012

Laos

1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006

Malaysia

1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2011

Maldives

2013, 2014, 2015

Mongolia

1998, 1999, 2002, 2005, 2010, 2011, 2013

Myanmar

2002, 2005, 2006, 201310

3. Collection and Dissemination of Disaster Information
Nepal

1998, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014

Pakistan2005, 2006, 2009, 2015, 2016, 2017

Papua New Guinea

1998, 1999, 2005, 2006

Philippines

1998, 1999, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011,2012, 2014, 2016, 2017

Russia1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006

Singapore

1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006

Sri Lanka

1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2014,2015,2016

Tajikistan

1998, 1999, 2003, 2005, 2006

Thailand

1998, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011,2012, 2016, 2017

Uzbekistan

1998, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2013, 2015

Vietnam

1998, 1999, 2005, 2006, 2017

Yemen

2009, 2012, 2014

Country Reports includes the following topics provided by each member country.
I. Natural Hazards in the Country
1.1 Natural Hazards Likely to Affect the Country village
1.2 Recent Major Disasters(Basic data of disasters, damage situation, response and recovery information)
II. Disaster Management System
2.1 Administration System
2.2 Legal System and Framework
2.3 Structure of Disaster Management
2.4 Priorities on Disaster Risk Management
III. Disaster Management Strategy, Policy and Plan
IV. Budget Size on National Level
V. Progress of the Implementation of Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA)
VI. Recent Major Projects on Disaster Risk Reduction
VII. Counterparts of ADRC

11

3-1-2. Natural Disaster Data Book
(1) Background
Past disaster records are critical data in policy making, review, survey and analysis of disastermanagement plan. ADRC concluded MOU on disaster data utilization with the Centre for
Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) and has conducted analyses on disaster
impacts based on the database, EM-DAT maintained by CRED. For instance, 20th Century Data
Book on Asian Natural Disasters, and its revision released in 2000 and 2002 respectively featured
disasters which hit its member countries while annual Natural Disaster Data Book covers disastercharacteristics in the world.
ADRC continues to provide basic data on natural disasters and making efforts to facilitate useof data.

(2) Natural Disaster Data Book 2016
This section presents a summary of Natural Disaster Data Book 2016, which covers regionaland disaster-specific issues of the year and long term.
The following Figures 3-1-2 and Tables 3-1-3 depict the results of analyses of national disasterand impacts in 2016 and in the long term.
According to EM-DAT, 350 natural disasters occurred in 2016 worldwide, killing 10,273
people and affecting over 204 million people. The estimated amount of economic damage cameclose to US$147.4 billion.
In 2016, the earthquake that hit Ecuador in April brought about serious damages to the country.
The disaster claimed nearly 670 people. The storm that hit the United States in January has thelargest affected people in the world with over 85.0 million. On the other hand, the flood that hit
China in June caused the largest economic damage
worth US$2.2 billion, which ranked the highest.
By region, Asia is ranked the highest in the indicesof disaster occurrences, the number of people killed
and economic damage. Asia accounts for 45.1 percent
in occurrences; number of people killed, 50.5 percent;and amount of economic damage, 49.5 percent. As forthe number of people affected, Americas topped by
46.4 percent.as seen in Figure 3-1-2 and Table3-1-1.
By disaster types, flood is dominant in occurrence,killed, and economic damage at 45.7 percent, 45.3
percent, and 38.7 percent, respectively, while storm
tops in number of people affected by 46.0 percent.

123. Collection and Dissemination of Disaster Information

60.0%

50.0%

40.0%30.0%

20.0%

10.0%

0.0%

Occurrence
AfricaKilledAmericasAffectedAsia

EuropeDamage
Oceania

Table.3-1-2. Impacts of Natural Disasters by Region 2016

Fig.3-1-1. Impacts of Natural Disasters by Region 2016
ImpactRegion

O ccurrence

KilledAffected(share in % )(share in % )(share in % )Damage (US$ million)(share in % )Africa63(18.0% )2,554(24.9% )13,760,813(6.7% )

867

(0.6% )

Americas85(24.3% )2,062(20.1% )95,038,986(46.6% )57,148(38.8% )(49.5% )Asia158(45.1% )5,186(50.5% )

94,718,029(46.4% )73,017

Europe28(8.0% )415(4.0% )

93,426(0.0% )

11,179(7.6% )

O ceania

16(4.6% )56(0.5% )490,911(0.2% )

5,160

(3.5% )

Total350(100.0% )10,273(100.0% )204,102,165(100.0% )147,371(100.0% )13

3-1-3. Disaster Information Sharing Using GLIDE Numbers
GLIDE is the acronym for the GLobal unique disaster IDEntifier system, in which commonlyformatted but unique numbers are assigned to disasters all over the world. The GLIDE systemwas first proposed by ADRC and has been adopted and used by more than 20 internationalorganizations and research institutes.
There are many organizations around the world that design and develop their own disasterdatabases freely accessible online. When a disaster occurs, information is distributed over theInternet not only by organizations in the affected countries but also by organizations and the mass
media in other countries. Whenever a disaster occurs in any part of the world, ADRC collects
information from websites of relevant organizations and worldwide news agencies, or by sending
e-mails to contact persons in the affected area. Over the course of its experience, ADRC came up
against several problems in collecting disaster information using these methods, including thefollowing.
① It requires considerable manpower to search Internet for websites of relevant individualorganizations every time a disaster occurs.
② There is no standardized naming protocol for disasters. As many different names are given
to a certain single disaster by various organizations, even search engines such as Google
or Yahoo sometimes return no results.
③ Website links may be lost, once the structure of particular organization's database orwebsite is modified.
The GLIDE system offers a solution to these problems. It will significantly improve theefficiency with which information on historical and ongoing disasters can be retrieved fromdatabases and websites.
At the Global Disaster Information Network (GDIN) Conference held in Canberra, Australia
in March 2001, ADRC proposed to develop a standardized coding system for managing
information on disasters around the world. This proposal was accepted and implemented as apilot project by the GDIN. In 2004, glidenumber.net was jointly developed by ADRC and OCHAReliefWeb, with technical assistance provided by LaRED. It is designed to issue new GLIDE
numbers to disasters immediately after they occur. Moreover, ADRC, the CRED, IRI/Columbia
University, the USAID/OFDA, the WMO, IFRC, UNDP, and ISDR Secretariat have agreed touse the GLIDE number format as the standard for assigning disaster identification numbers.

14