A geo-informatics based approach for disaster risk assessment: a perspective analysis

In many countries like India, risk analysis is limited to hazard mapping, showing areas where different levels of hazard can be expected. The available risk information is usually at too limited in spatial and temporal resolution to provide useful information on increasingly complex and dynamic risk patterns. Risk maps, based on coarse resolution Earth Observation (EO) data, give the impression of uniform hazard and vulnerability patterns over wide areas. As such risk is quite complex and dynamic. Risk analysis strategies have normally been restricted to the physical aspects. In most countries it is extremely rare to find risk analysis to take account of the social, economic, institutional and cultural aspects of vulnerability. The absence of conceptual and spatial models capable of representing the social, economic and cultural dimensions of vulnerability is another problem. Many aspects of vulnerability are difficult to quantify. The development of advanced models is still at the frontier of geo-informatics research, with the result that there are still no tried and tested procedures available for building social vulnerability aspects into risk information systems. The present paper suggests couple of approaches wherein multi-date EO data have strategically been used for risk assessment due to floods and drought.