INFORM Index for Risk Management: Concept and Methodology, Version 2017

This is the forth report of the revised INFORM’s concept and methodology. INFORM is a composite indicator that identifies countries at risk of humanitarian crisis and disaster that would overwhelm national response capacity. The INFORM index supports a proactive crisis and disaster management framework.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Humanitarian Impact of Tropical Cyclones

JRC¿s research on tropical cyclones of 2007 builds the foundations for an innovative cyclone alert model. In contrast with the work of 2006 (focusing on wind speed modelling), 2007 focused on integrating data provided by other organisations into a single consequence analysis model. A collaboration with the Pacific Disaster Center allowed JRC to access structured data on tropical cyclone track information. This new source of information, available since August 2007, enables us to implement more advanced impact models which provide improved information for humanitarian emergency managers. As a result, since October 2007 GDACS maps feature tropical cyclone wind buffers overlaid on global real-time cloud images. While a lot of modelling work has been completed and geoprocessing systems were put in place to exploit this new source of data, the resulting products have not been integrated fully in GDACS.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit

Index for Risk Management - InfoRM: Concept and Methodology

The Index for Risk Management (InfoRM) initiative began in October 2012 as a convergence of interests of United Nations agencies, humanitarian donors and the European Commission to establish a common evidence-base for global humanitarian risk analysis. A concept was developed by a core group of agencies and presented publicly at the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction in May 2013. The JRC is the technical partner and has developed the methodology for the composite indicator. The current document describes the final methodology that will be used for the publication of the first InfoRM Index in early 2014.JRC.G.2-Global security and crisis managemen

Geoprocessing Web Services

Since 2003, Critech has performed research on web based geoprocessing. This was before OGC started work on the Web Processing Service standards. While continuously evaluating the benefits and drawbacks of existing (open-source and commercial) GIS software packages, the operational benefits of an ESRI site license drove the development in this area. Early work focused on scripting technologies. In 2007, Critech exploited the Application Program Interfaces (APIs) of ESRI software, in particular ESRI SDE. With the (stable) release of ESRI ArcGIS Server, web geoprocessing becomes an integral part of the software. This new technology will be used by Critech in 2008. This document reports on the status of the work.JRC.G.2-Support to external securit

INFORM Covid-19 Risk Index

The INFORM COVID-19 Risk Index is an experimental adaptation of the INFORM Epidemic Risk Index and aims to identify: “countries at risk from health and humanitarian impacts of COVID-19 that could overwhelm current national response capacity, and therefore lead to a need for additional international assistance”. It can be used to support prioritization of preparedness and early response actions for the primary impacts of the pandemic, and identify countries where secondary impacts are likely to have the most critical humanitarian consequences. The main scope of the INFORM COVID-19 Risk Index is global and regional risk-informed resource allocation, i.e. where comparable understanding of countries’ risk is important. It cannot predict the impacts of the pandemic in individual countries.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

INFORM report 2020: Shared evidence for managing crisis and disaster

INFORM partners believe that the availability of shared analysis of crises and disasters can lead to better coordination of actors and better outcomes for at-risk and affected people. Specifically, INFORM creates a space and process for shared analysis that can support joint strategy development, planning and action to prevent, prepare for, respond to and recover from crises. This can bring together development, humanitarian and other actors to manage risk and respond better when crises do occur. This report sets out INFORM’s vision for a suite of products to support decision-making that are easy to use and open to everyone. This vision involves bringing scientific rigour to the process of analysing crises and pooling expertise to develop shared methodologies. By working together, we can reduce the investments required by individual organisations, assure the quality of our analysis and make it available for the common good.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Imputation of missing values in the INFORM Global Risk Index

Although they have been selected on the basis of their reliability, consistency, continuity and completeness, most of indicators used in INFORM Global Risk Index do not have global coverage and neither are issued regularly every year. This results in a significant number of missing values, irregularly distributed among countries, time and indicators. The main motivations for imputing missing values arise from the need to create consistent trends that would otherwise not be possible due to the lack of data in the indicator’s time series, and to increase the reliability of the single compound release. In the presented study we focus on better understanding the patterns and mechanisms of missing values in the INFORM GRI model, and on evaluating their impact on the model’s outputs. The scope is to develop a missing data imputation strategy to be implemented in the INFORM GRI that will strongly depend on the reason why data is missing.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

INFORM GLOBAL RISK INDEX RESULTS 2018

Welcome to the report of the INFORM Global Risk Index for 2018.The INFORM Risk Index is a way to understand and measure the risk of humanitarian crises and disasters, and how the conditions that lead to them affect sustainable development. INFORM partners and other organisations continue to use INFORM products to support their prioritisation and decision-making relating to crisis and disaster prevention, preparedness and response. This is the fourth annual report of INFORM and has a special focus on how composite indices, such as INFORM, might be used to support and monitor the implementation of new development frameworks like the Sustainable Development Goals.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

Usage of INFORM GRI in Humanitarian Aid and Development Assistance Initiatives

After five years since the first official release of INFORM GRI in 2014, the INFORM GRI's Impact Survey aimed at assessing the current usage of INFORM GRI, the impact its usage has had in decision-making, the support and promotion it has received and the improvements and future endeavours that are considered necessary. The multiple choice survey has been left open for six weeks on the EUSurvey platform. It has been open to any users wishing to contribute to it. Nineteen contributions have been submitted, seventeen from the INFORM partners and two from other users. The results have essentially confirmed the expectations. Among the contributors to the survey, the regular users of INFORM GRI and the occasional users are almost even. However, regular users are using it very frequently, more than seasonally. This seems to indicate still a high usage of the tool, despite the number of occasional users. INFORM GRI is then used for several reasons, above all for country analyses but also for supporting decision-making for allocation of resources in humanitarian aid. It is used in combination with other quantitative and qualitative measures and often adapted to the users' specific needs. INFORM GRI has provided humanitarian and development practitioners with a shared tool based on an agreed methodology that has supported evidence based analyses and decisions as well as the adoption of a risk based approach. Nonetheless, there is still a lot to be done for making humanitarian and development assistance more effective and coordinated. INFORM GRI is generally promoted internally within the organisation but also externally with partner organisations to a more limited extent. Finally, the clear outcome is that the regional or subnational model is the most required, followed by a seasonally updated index and less by a hazard dependent index. The idea of a platform for sharing knowledge, data and best practices needs to be better clarified instead. It has received positive feedback, although there is some uncertainty and reluctance with respect to the collaboration and sharing of the contents of it.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen

INFORM scientific and technical improvements in 2017: Missing values imputation and IT developments

The JRC is the technical and scientific leader of the INFORM model, and responsible for methodological improvements, and their implementation. This publication describe the INFORM methodological and technical improvements implemented by JRC in the 2017. On despite the indicators have been selected on be base of their reliability, consistency continuity and completeness, most of the them don’t cover all the countries for all the year. This results in a significant number of missing values, irregularly distributed among countries, time and indicators. This report describes an innovative approach for predicting missing values using advanced statistical technics. We also present the IT developments in support to the INFORM model, including the web platform for managing the INFORM Subnational models and the improvements in the API.JRC.E.1-Disaster Risk Managemen