Developing an Open Database to Support Forensic Investigation of Disasters in South East Asia: FORINSEA v1.0

This article describes the development of a bespoke database, FORINSEA1.0, created to address the need for a systematic curation of information needed for the descriptive phase of the FORIN approach and its application to two study areas in the South East Asia region. FORINSEA1.0 allows researchers, for the first time, to explore and make use of subnational, geocoded data on major disasters triggered by natural hazards (flooding, earthquake, landslide and meteorological hazards) since 1945 until 2020 in the hydrological catchment of the Red River in Vietnam and the Marikina Basin in the Philippines. FORINSEA1.0 also contains relevant subnational information on relevant socio-economic policies and development of key infrastructure to provide the basis of the descriptive FORIN analysis. While the catchment approach is potentially transferable to other regions, this Data Report does not show how these records might be applied or integrated to support a FORIN investigation of a specific disaster or event, neither provide basic ground rules for setting up similar systems in other countries

Developing an Open Database to Support Forensic Investigation of Disasters in South East Asia: FORINSEA v1.0

Arguably the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) fail to deal with root causes of disasters (Wisner; 2020) and therefore calls for science to support policy move towards more holistic solutions to disaster risk. In this context; root causes analysis has been described as “a structured investigation that aims to identify the true cause of a problem and the actions necessary to eliminate it” (DKKV; 2012; p. 12). A systematic review of 40 studies of disaster causation concluded that the FORensic INvestigations of disasters (FORIN) provides a broad and adaptable approach for the study of disaster root causes (Fraser et al.; 2016). FORIN has been developed by the IntegratedResearch on Disaster Risk (IRDR) program of International Council for Science (ICSU), International Social Science Council (ISSC) and United Nations International Strategy for disaster Reduction (UNISDR) (Oliver-Smith et al.; 2016). The FORIN approach has been used to investigate the root causes of disasters around the world. For example; to reveal the underlying causes and risk drivers in the Haitian earthquake (Oliver-Smith et al.; 2016); to inform the narratives to identify the factors that exacerbated the loss of human life in one of the most devastated local municipalities on the coast by 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (Nakasu et al.; 2017)or to understand the political ecology of the recurrent El Niño-related disasters in Peru (French et al.,2020)