A
new digital mapping system will help aid groups respond more quickly
when earthquakes strike, a U.N. official said on Wednesday.
The
Automatic Disaster Analysis and Mapping system (ADAM) pulls information
from the U.S. Geological Survey, World Bank and World Food Programme
databases, getting aid workers vital facts from earthquake zones within
minutes of a quake, as opposed to the old, manual search system which
took hours.
Having
quick access to information on the scale of a disaster, and what
supplies and infrastructure are available nearby, will allow relief
groups to make quicker decisions on how to move food into a stricken
region.
It
will help answer logistical questions like: “How many workers should be
sent in? How should agencies coordinate among various agencies and
NGOs?” Jane Howard, a spokeswoman for the World Food Programme, told the
Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Getting
food aid, tents, medical kits and communications equipment into a
disaster zone within the first 24 hours is crucial for saving lives,
U.N. officials said.
“Instead
of staff having to trawl through different systems, all the information
is now available through one, common, early warning system,” WFP
official Filippo Pongelli said in a statement. “The whole system has
been developed with open-source (free to use) technology, and this means
that not a single dollar has been spent in software licensing.”
Such
a system could have speeded up the response time after disasters like
the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that rocked Haiti in 2010, Howard said.
The WFP hopes to expand the digital early warning system to cover tropical storms, floods and other disasters.
Posted by : Gizmeon
No comments:
Post a Comment