Hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and wildfires can create massive population displacement with serious impacts on communities and human health. One initiative looks at the patterns these dynamic situations create in order to get timely analysis into the hands of emergency responders.
CrisisReady, a research-response initiative at Harvard and Direct Relief, released a report Tuesday that outlines the team’s work over the past 12 months, including wildfires in California, hurricanes in the United States, earthquakes in Turkey and Syria, and floods in Libya.
The initiative is supported by grants from the Harvard Data Science Initiative, Google.org, Data for Good at Meta, and the World Bank GFDRR.
This year, the organization published over 90 situation reports, or “ReadyReports,” during 23 disasters, and the reports were shared with state agencies, international humanitarian organizations, and local response teams. Channels are now in place to generate these reports within 24 hours of a disaster occurring anywhere in the world.
Another tool, particularly useful in regions where data access is limited, is the ReadyMapper, CrisisReady’s data visualization tool to monitor real-time population mobility, health infrastructure status, disaster perimeters, disaster impact, and population vulnerability. The organization is also growing its datasets related to climate change and human health.
