This technical annex describes the concepts, data and methods applied to achieve the Disaster Risk Index (DRI).
Among the different recommendations from the two previous GRAVITY reports, drought was the obvious significant missing hazard. In the first GRAVITY report (feasibility study) food insecurity was highlighted for producing the largest amount of casualties. Nevertheless, due to time restriction and complexity to model such hazard, this important issue was left unstudied. The problem for the UNDP World Vulnerability Report (WVR) was that if drought was not included, a global approach on vulnerability to human development would not be achieved: as most of Africa is deeply affected by such events.
This study presents the results from the second phase of the project Global Risk And Vulnerability Index Trend per Year (GRAVITY) developed by UNEP/GRID-Geneva for the UNDP/BPRD. At the end of the first phase - the feasibility study - which consisted on the identification of global data sets and indicators for explaining casualties from natural hazards, twelve recommendations were made. The second phase has concentrated on the delimitation of this physical exposure based on methodologies and collection of data sets previously developed at UNEP/GRID-Geneva [PREVIEW project, 2000], in order to highlight places of high natural hazard occurrences.
The objective of the present study is to provide UNDP/ERD with a statistical analysis, that aims to gather, prepare the information in order to highlight factors related to human vulnerability and allows the comparison between countries (thus requiring extensive normalisation). The tasks undertaken include the identification and treatment of the most accurate available data sets on geographical, and geophysical parameters to determine the exposure of the countries. As well as socio-economical factors that are connected trough a thorough analysis with the information recorded on human losses per event extracted from the International Disaster Database from CRED.
This Report introduces a pioneering Disaster Risk Index (DRI) that measures the relative vulnerability of countries to three key natural hazards — earthquake, tropical cyclone and flood — identifies development factors that contribute to risk, and shows in quantitative terms, just how the effects of disasters can be either reduced or exacerbated by policy choices
Data visualization of the disaster risk index has been designed by GRID-Europe. The pioneering Disaster Risk Index (DRI) Analysis Tool measures the relative vulnerability of countries to three key natural hazards — earthquake, tropical cyclone and flood — and identifies development factors that contribute to risk, and shows in quantitative terms, just how the effects of disasters can be either reduced or exacerbated by policy choices. Our hope is that the toolx will both help generate renewed interest in this critical development issue and help bring together stakeholders around more careful and coherent planning to mitigate the impact of future disasters.
