Online Information Management System for Disaster Risk Reduction in the Southern African Development Community

Within the “Building Disaster Resilience to Natural Hazards in Sub-Saharan African Regions, Countries and Communities” programme, launched in 2015 to provide effective implementation of an African comprehensive disaster risk reduction framework, five result areas were defined and assigned to four implementing partners. This project falls within area 2 “Enhanced DRR* coordination, planning and policy advisory capacities of Regional Economic Communities” – which was assigned to the World Bank’s Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (WB/GFDRR).

In fact, this assignment is one of four projects within the “Strengthening the Disaster Risk Reduction Coordination, Planning and Policy Advisory Capacity of the SADC* and Research Collaboration on DRR in Southern Africa” Program.

The overall objective of the project was the development of an online DRR* Information Management System (IMS) containing regional hazard risk maps and alert services, linked to the regional and global DRR* web services.

Some of the online DRR* IMS* functionalities include:

• Public navigation through SADC* DRR* contents: DRR profiles of the 16 Member States (including maps, general info and specific DRR data), over 400 documents DRR related, DRR Sendai Framework basics, DRR ongoing projects and much more;
• Restricted access to classified data and documents (for SADC users or Member States users);
• Navigating in three different languages (English, French and Portuguese);
• Using 10 different filtering tools (individually or combined) to search through the databases (containing over 400 docs and 30 hazard events and growing).

The assignment also included:

• The production of phase reports regarding data integration processes, sharing protocols, portal functionalities and technological information;
• User manual explaining how to navigate the website and how to upload and update data, reports and documents, and administration manual, covering more advanced uses of the website (meant for portal administrators); Both manuals were written in English, Portuguese and French;
• Online live prototype walkthrough and presentation to present the website functionalities to the client (SADC Secretariat);
• 4 online training sessions: one for the SADC Secretariat (client) and three (one in each of the official languages) for the 16 Member States delegates, including Training Manuals in three languages.

* DRR – Disaster Risk Reduction; SADC – Southern African Development Community (16 Member States); IMS – Information Management System.

[Project funded by the World Bank]