The European Union aims to improve the reaction and prevention of natural disasters. The structure of the EU confronts disaster management and NGOs with several organisational problems. Even there are already a lot of projects and programs for disaster prevention as well as for disaster relief, the cross-organisation and the inclusion of population is still a challenge. To address this topic, the Inclusive Disaster Resilience Index (INDRIX) was launched bei the EU.
Inclusion through information
INDRIX combines the expertise of NGOs in civil protection and in social services. Together with public civil protection authorities and research partners previous project results will be collected, clustered, mapped and evaluated. This information will be combined with knowledge from other stakeholders, most importantly from the target group. Concentrating on especially excluded parts of populations in Europe, INDRIX focuses on taking care of people with certain needs: People with disability, chronic illness, the leak of informing sources as the internet or other media as well as elderly people face particular challenges in emergency cases.
How INDRIX will simplify disaster reaction
The goal of INDRIX is to merge information from many different sources and already existing programs to a create unique prevention platform. Existing projects for disaster prevention like coast and flood protection on the Irish atlantic coast or distant early warning systems on earthquakes are included. Furthermore, INDRIX concentrates on developing a social resilience index to detect European regions with a weak disaster reaction infrastructure. Based on that information, stakeholders have the opportunity to get an overview on their own preparedness and a benchmark for different European regions. At the end of the developing process, the outcome will allow stakeholders and the European Union to identify regions with a special need for prevention and disaster relief strategies.
Creating an interactive map based on OpenStreetMap
Ubilabs is responsible for the technical implementation and will visualize the project on an interactive map based on OpenStreetMap. The dynamic visualization supports the evaluation of the results. In this way Ubilabs wants to create a new way to reach the affected people as active stakeholders. On the background of qualitative and quantitative data, an interactive map filled with expertise knowledge will be developed and accessible as a user-friendly map, both for organisations and for European citizens.
A pan-European development process
INDRIX is developed with the concentrated know-how of European NGOs such as Samaritan International (ANPS, LSA and WK) and the "Tor Vegata" University in Rome. Ubilabs is committed to all meetings and processes. Regular meetings are held with an international team in the participating European countries. In October 2016, Ubilabs hosted the second multi-day team meeting in Hamburg.