Making disaster risk assessment more effective by making risk data easier to store, find, edit and share.
Disaster risk assessments are more important and more effective than ever, but common issues with risk data are beginning to limit their application. The RDL was launched to address those issues by developing tools and resources designed specifically for the needs of disaster risk experts and the assessments they perform.
We seek to create a collection of components to make working with risk data easier, each one addressing a different underlying problem. Working together, these components create an effective library system designed explicitly for storing, finding, editing and exchanging data for disaster risk assessments. The first of these two components are now available.
A new language for describing hazard, exposure, vulnerability and loss data
The RDL schema gives risk experts a single language to describe hazard, exposure, vulnerability and modelled loss datasets. It gives datasets an underlying consistency that makes them highly interoperable and easily read by both people and machines. The schema also contains labels for key metadata fields, making it easier to identify datasets without relying on external files or descriptions.
Storing hazard, exposure, vulnerability and loss datasets in the same environment
The architecture of the RDL database is capable of storing all four common types of risk data in the same environment, where they can be indexed and retrieved by a single search function. This reduces the number of separate resources needed to store risk data, reducing costs and search times.
The RDL project is the result of the collective effort and ongoing support of internationally-recognised research insitutions and established global partnerships with combined expertise across multiple hazards and all aspects of risk assessment. The partners have a complete understanding of the challenges risk analysts face in finding, editing and exchanging data for disaster risk assessments, for various scales and contexts.