Risk assessment kit: from data acquisition to risk visualization

The overal objective is to create a toolbox and methodology to produce useful and accurate risk maps

In the doctoral research of Hanne Glas, a flexible methodology for flood risk assessment in developing and data-poor regions was developed. Furthermore, the first steps were taken towards the creation of a risk mapping toolbox. In this project, the existing methodology will be extended to a comprehensive multi-hazard risk assessment kit, applicable worldwide, that consists of a low-cost methodology to acquire the necessary input data and a user-friendly toolbox that allows the production of accurate vulnerability and risk maps.

In a first step, the end users of the risk assessment kit, for example governmental agencies and NGOs, will be questioned to delineated the specific user needs, not only for flood risk assessment but for other hazard assessments as well, and determine the necessary information to deploy an adequate multi-hazard risk management. This user input will guide the development of a comprehensive and easy-to-use user interface of the risk assessment tool. Furthermore, the information gathered will aid in the extension of the existing flood risk methodology to other natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes and drought. In a next phase, the research will focus on low-cost and flexible data acquisition methods when not enough data is available to perform an adequate assessment. An acquisition method using questionnaires, that was tested in the doctoral research of Hanne Glas for a study area in Haiti, will be further adapted and tested in other regions. Furthermore, this research will investigate how these questionnaires can be complemented with other conventional data acquisition methods in the most efficient manner.

The first testing of the developed risk assessment kit will be performed for the Caribbean island state Haiti. This developing country is the poorest of the northern hemisphere and is characterized by an extremely low resilience to several natural hazards such as earthquakes, hurricanes and storm surges. In the past years, the Centre National de l’Information Géo-Spatiale (CNIGS) has collected all available maps and geographic data (on national and regional scale) and gathered them on the web database haitidata.org. The available data and its origin will be examined to determine if and how the data can be used in the risk assessment kit. The accuracy of the data will be tested and verified using sample data, gathered during fieldwork. In a final step, the developed risk assessment kit will be further tested for other developing countries and regions, to assure the flexible and generic approach and the global coverage of the tool.