A new tool to assess the exposure of the Mediterranean region to disasters

The "Euromed Programme on Prevention, Preparedness and Response to Natural and Man-made Disasters" PPRD South team is preparing the first training workshop on “Geographic Information Systems for Civil Protection” which is scheduled for 9-12 March 2009 in Rome. An important component of the PPRD South Programme is the setting up of the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which will be used to produce national and regional interactive risk maps.

A risk map is a model that combines the degree of exposure to hazards, calculated on the basis of historical disaster records, with the key elements of a community, such as the distribution of population, strategic infrastructures, natural resources, and potentially dangerous areas (subject to floods, fires, landslides, volcanoes, etc.).

To this topic the Programme will devote three seminars. In the first seminar, participants will be introduced to GIS concepts and will be provided with methodologies and tools for the construction of the PPRD South Web GIS and for the exchange and sharing of data at national and regional level. The 28 participants to the training workshop will learn how to set up and populate the GIS database, they will also acquire methodologies for editing, retrieving and analysing geospatial data. All this will permit PPRD South Partner countries to adopt and possibly develop advanced IT tools which could support the definition of proper prevention policies. The availability of these tools will also bring the national Civil Protection systems of these countries closer to the European Civil Protection Mechanism and, in case of disasters, will allow them to cooperate in the best possible way.