Empower people in disaster-prone areas to become more resilient.
Empower people in disaster-prone areas to become more resilient.
Natural and environmental disasters cause damages, and economic and live losses. Many countries and big cities in the world are highly exposed to these disasters. Climate change and urban population growth increase the impacts of disasters and their likelihood. Cirela focuses on using sustainable communication and information technologies to reduce these impacts and losses.
Big cities such as Capetown, Jakarta, Kolkata, Buenos Aires, face flood risks. Jakarta, for example, is frequently hit by floods. To make such a city ready to confront flood events, a Flood Early Warning System is needed to know when people have to get prepared for an evacuation, as well as stakeholders involved in the evacuation process. Cirela activities currently focus on flood monitoring.
People in disaster-prone areas have to live with natural hazards. They need to get prepared, to withstand and recover quickly after being hit by a disaster. They need to be informed on the risks and to get involved. Cirela proposes communication and information technology solutions to empower people against natural and environmental disasters.
Progress on wireless sensor Network (WSN) technology makes this technology very attractive. WSNs are more and more used in a wide variety of applications including monitoring of natural phenomenas. A WSN based early warning system seems promising, and Cirela is working on it.
Software tools related to natural and environmental disasters are supposed to help people, even more when they concern people's lives. These software tools involve many stakeholders connected to each other to handle a disaster. A good quality, standardized, open and secure software is needed. We believe that open source solutions are appropriate for this kind of applications.
It's mandatory to have a good understanding of the risk and evolution of a monitored disaster. A good visualization help decision makers to take the right decisions and help people to understand information that come from the system.