Risk information is a critical input to disaster risk management, building resilience of urban areas, infrastructure and communities. The Open Access to Risk Information area of engagement aims to make high-quality risk information available faster and at lower costs, and develop new tools that allow decision-makers and communities to collect, share, and understand risk information.
The ThinkHazard! project was initiated in 2015 to facilitate greater access to hazard information and risk management guidance for development sector professionals. The open access thinkhazard.org website enables users to screen potential project locations for the existence of multiple natural hazards, then to obtain guidance on how to manage the risks to their project, and any impacts of their project on the local hazard. Version 1 of ThinkHazard! was used over 140,000 times in 200 countries, and has been adopted into World Bank Operations Portal for core use in project planning. This report has been updated to reflect new hazards and revisions in methodology, made in the development of ThinkHazard! version 2, released in July 2017.
ThinkHazard! is developed and maintained by the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR).
Risk information is a critical input to disaster risk management (DRM) and building resilience of urban areas, infrastructure and communities. Interpretation of hazard information to determine potential impact and, in turn, implement robust a risk management strategy requires knowledge of often highly technical data. Additionally, hazard data is generated in many different formats from many organizations. If the data is made available publicly at all, it is via a growing number of online sources and data portals. So, the task to find hazard data sets, decide which data set to use for a given purpose, and then interpret the data can require an increasing amount of time and prior knowledge.
DRM projects have too often been executed without full appreciation of the range of hazards and level of each hazard that exist in a project area. This can result in underestimation of disaster risk and development of a project that is potentially not robust enough to withstand the impacts of one or more hazards that could affect the project in the future. Access to, and appropriate use of hazard and risk information remains a barrier to mainstreaming DRM into development projects.
ThinkHazard! is an analytical tool dedicated to improving knowledge and understanding of natural hazards. It was envisioned that the ThinkHazard! primary user would be development sector professionals, who need to gather hazard information while planning projects. However, the benefits of ThinkHazard! stretch beyond the development sector, into general education about global distribution of multiple hazards and how to manage them.
To achieve its objectives, the online user interface has a simple structure and workflow, comprising, 1) a location search function, 2) an overview of hazard level for 11 hazards for a selected location, and 3) a hazard-specific screen that presents risk management guidance, relevant contact information and further information in the form of useful websites and reports for that hazard and location.
ThinkHazard! can be accessed at: www.thinkhazard.org. Begin typing your location of interest (country name, region or district) and select the correct location from the drop-down. Hit enter, and you will be taken to the overview of hazards for that location. From there, you can view more detail on any of the hazards (including guidance on reducing risk, useful resources and contacts), and you can navigate to more specific and neighboring locations using the map.
User feedback is a vital component of ongoing improvements and updates to ThinkHazard!. Users are able to provide feedback on any topic concerning the tool, via the feedback form available on the user interface. Feedback is delivered to the administrator, who will action any required changes and log requests for new features. If the feedback concerns new data for use in the tool, the administrator will follow up to review the data suitability for ThinkHazard!.
ThinkHazard! uses open-source code, available at on GitHub.
New versions can be developed using the open-source code as a basis, by including new recommendations and branding. Further, new functionality can be developed as required, and the tool linked to different data repositories. Versions specific to an organization or sector can be developed using this code to provide coverage of particular hazards, or to tailor recommendations more specifically to sector requirements. Sector-specific versions of the tool may have damage thresholds tailored to that sector, for example, using construction standards for critical facilities to determine the intensity of event that could be considered damaging.
This guide describes the hazard levels shown in ThinkHazard!, and how the raw hazard data is classified into hazard levels. A general section describes the use of global and local data, and how the tool uses multiple sources of hazard data for the same area. It then presents sections showing the classification of data for each hazard in turn, because the method varies from hazard to hazard.