India to get national database on disasters by 2020: Here’s why it matters

By Tanvi Patel

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India, being a signatory to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction (SFDRR), has set targets to manage disasters and ensure that losses incurred after each catastrophe are less than the previous ones.

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Calculating these numbers and the progress in meeting targets set in the agreement cannot be done without a proper database on the impact of previous disasters.

The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) under the government of India has thus planned to create a national database on disasters in the next two years.

This national database will carry vital information that will help the government reach targets set by the SFDRR agreement such as gender and income class of the affected people.

Kamal Kishore, an official from NDMA, told the Hindustan Times, “We will try and provide data that are as disaggregated as possible, by space and gender. For a large country like India, aggregated data collected at the state level is not as useful. It has to go down further to district(s) and preferably, block levels.”

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